You will produce a short playbook so anyone in your business can run comments and messages consistently.
Farah takes a week off for her sister's wedding and asks her part-time assistant to look after the account. When she gets back, a customer complaint has been answered with an argument, two buying questions have gone unanswered for five days, and a scam account pretending to be Farah's shop has messaged a dozen of her followers about a fake giveaway.
None of this was the assistant's fault. Nothing was written down, so she guessed. This exercise produces a one-page playbook so that anyone, including you on a tired day, can run your comments and messages the same way.
Decide when comments and messages get cleared, and write it down. For most small accounts, that means checking once soon after each post goes up, as lesson 7.1 suggested, and once or twice a day otherwise. If daily is not possible, set fixed times in the week and say so in your profile or auto-reply, so people know when to expect an answer.
Be specific. "Check comments within an hour of posting. Clear all comments and messages at 12.30pm and 8pm daily. Saturdays, 8pm only." A routine like that can be handed to someone else.
Write short reply templates for the situations that come up again and again. You will adjust each one to fit the person, but having a starting point saves time and keeps your tone consistent.
Cover three groups. Common questions, such as opening hours, delivery areas, how far ahead to order, and sizes. Buying signals, using the public reply and first private message you wrote after lesson 7.3, From comment to conversation to customer. And complaints, using the calm public reply and private follow-up from lesson 7.2.
Farah's playbook, as an example, included this template for a late-delivery complaint: "I'm sorry your order hasn't arrived yet. I've sent you a message so we can check it and sort it out today." And this one for a sizing question: "Our size guide is pinned in our profile. Message us your usual size and height, and we'll suggest the best fit."
Keep each template to a sentence or two, written in your own voice. A template that sounds like a call centre makes things worse.
Copy in the moderation rules you wrote after lesson 7.2: what you reply to, what you hide, what you delete, what you take to direct messages, and when you block or report.
Then add who decides on the difficult cases. Anyone running the account can answer a delivery question. Not everyone should decide how to handle an angry customer threatening to post a bad review, a comment that might involve the law, or a journalist asking questions. Name one person, with how to reach them, as the escalation contact. If you are a one-person business, it is you, and the rule might be "never reply to these on the same day; sleep on it".
Scammers target the followers of small businesses because those followers already trust the brand. Write down the patterns to watch for in your playbook.
A common one is the fake account: a copy of your account with a near-identical name and your photos, which messages your followers about a prize, a discount or a problem with their order and asks them to click a link or pay. Others are comments offering fake promotions, accounts asking your followers for personal details, and messages to you pretending to be the platform and warning that your account will be closed.
Write what to do in each case. Report impersonation accounts to the platform. Post a short warning to your followers that you never ask for payment or passwords through comments or messages. Never click links in messages claiming to be from the platform. In Singapore, the ScamShield website and helpline from the National Crime Prevention Council and the police are the place to check suspicious messages and report scams.
Your playbook should fit on one page: a routine with specific times, reply templates for common questions, buying signals and complaints, your moderation rules with an escalation contact for difficult cases, and a short list of scam patterns with what to do about each. Someone who has never run your account should be able to pick it up and handle a normal week.
Now write yours: a one-page community playbook with a routine, reply templates, moderation rules and an escalation contact.
Write a one-page community playbook with a routine, reply templates, moderation rules and an escalation contact.
Junxiong-WFG Organisation is an authorised representative of AIA Financial Advisers Private Limited (Reg. No. 201715016G).