Listen up – talking to followers on Facebook

If you’re running a Facebook page, your followers expect to be able to contact you on Facebook. This doesn’t mean you have to respond to all comments and messages immediately, but messaging is a helpful way to manage your pages and provide a good service to your followers.

There are a number of ways Facebook helps you to manage your members’ interaction with your page.

Turn on messaging

  1. Click Settings at the top of your Page
  2. From General, click Messages
  3. Click to check or uncheck the box next to Allow people to contact my Page privately by showing the Message button
  4. Click Save Changes

Reply to comments publicly

There are times when you want to reply publicly, when you want to share the information with other followers or people who may read the post and comments thread. Just click reply under a comment and add your message. If it is a comment that is relevant to the whole thread – add it as a comment at the top of the post.

Reply to comments privately with a message

Until now, Page admins could only respond to people in the same way that the person reached out to the Page, either through a comment or private message. Now, Page admins can reply to public comments with a private message, so you can quickly resolve issues outside of the public comments.

To private message a comment, click on message at the foot of the comment

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When you message in response to a comment, you could also add a comment saying ‘we have messaged you’. This lets others know you are reading and responding to comments on the page.

Managing your Facebook inbox

Saved replies

Saved replies are templates of messages you can create, save and reuse when you respond to messages as your Page.

Page admins also have the option to edit saved responses before they send them.

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Create a saved reply:

  • Click saved replies at the foot of the messages page
  • Click on manage replies
  • Click on create reply
  • You can add a personalisation tag, so that your reply automatically uses the enquirer’s first name.

Managing your inbox

You can’t monitor your inbox 24/7 so set up some automatic messaging and flags that let people know what to expect

At the bottom left hand corner of the inbox you can change your status to ‘Away’ to let people know you’re not monitoring messages

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Set up an automatic response to incoming messages, maybe directing people to our helpline – 0800 0857 857

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To set up an instant reply

  • Click on settings at the top of the inbox
  • Click on messaging
  • Turn on instant replies and add a custom message

You can also adjust your expected response time in these settings

Bulk actions

It’s now easier to keep track of messages. Page admins can do bulk actions such as: archive, delete, flag and mark messages as read, unread and spam.