How to deal with inappropriate comments on your live chat, and more (Facebook Live session 5 summary))
At my last Facebook Live last Tuesday, we talked about 2 things:
The importance of creating a clear engagement pathway for your online services
The need to have a plan for problem people and their comments on live chat.
Here is the summary of that discussion and a preview of topics we’ll cover together tomorrow at my weekly Facebook Live 8am (PST) Tuesdays at Facebook.com/gregcurtis63.
Creating a clear engagement pathway for your online services
Like many of you, when we became and online church, we lost our One Place to welcome guests and get their contact info AND our One Program for connecting guests to our church and each other and help them find a small group and a ministry team. Many of you may have found yourself in the same boat.
This meant that our guests no longer had a clearly identified “first step” on their engagement pathway. All they had was a bunch of announcements.
Immediately we began asking for their email to obtain digital assets we were using daily as a church….and it worked! this was great as it was free. We got around 1000 sign ups on Easter and we are still identifying the amount of new guests that were represented in that group! We have also found that 20% to 25% of the leads and sign ups coming in, come in mid-week as people are not watching only the live stream, they are watching our services “on demand”.
We are all the new Netflix.
Literally, I have encountered guests on live chat who attended our church once last year who were very touched by our staff calling through our entire database to check in with people individually. No one else had called them. They were so touched, they came to our online service and began binge watching entire sermon series on demand!
With our online One Place beginning to emerge, we now needed to create Next Steps Online (Our One Program for connecting guests). It launches this coming week.
in order to become a part of that, we created a sign up page for each session which will happen after every live service.
We also created a text funnel that leads to Next Steps Online. New decisions to follow Jesus are invited to text “Isaidyes” to 545454. Here are the various texts in that funnel that we pray will led them to the next step in our engagement pathway:
Auto reply text
Congratulations on choosing to follow Jesus! To equip you for that journey, I'll send you info on Next Steps, a 4-wk online experience to help you make the most of pursuing God in this season. It starts in May. Till then, get fuel for your journey joining 21 Days of Prayer https://www.eastside.com/prayer-Greg
Saturday, April 18th
Hope to see you back for church online this weekend! I'll be on the http://eastside.com/live chat for the 9am, 10:30am & 12pm services on Sunday & would love to chat with you. -Greg
Sunday, April 19th
If you haven't already, be sure to sign up for 21 Days of Prayer at https://www.eastside.com/prayer It's a great way to keep moving forward on your spiritual journey. And don't forget to mark your calendar for May 2 or 3 for Next steps. http://eastside.com/nextsteps -Greg
The Next Friday April 24th:
Hope the 21 Days of prayer is helping you pursue God during this time. Let me know if you have any questions or prayer requests by texting back. You are not alone. Hope you can join us again for worship this weekend, and don't forget to sign up for Next Steps on May 2 or 3! http://eastside.com/nextsteps -Greg
The Last Friday May 1st
Want to know what the next steps are in your spiritual journey? Next Steps Online begins after every service this weekend. Sign up for a session here: http://eastside.com/nextsteps Hope to see you there! Greg
For more on how to create an online engagement pathway using my One Place>One Program>Two Processes>Two Placements strategy, click here.
Having a plan for problem people and their comments on live chat
Here is my adaptation of the plan Will Johnston has provided for our Online Hosts when a problem with someone on live chat occurs. Will is the Director of Build Community at Eastside and is a master at detailed responses and using something like this would benefit those you have creating engagement online during your services. For more ideas for what kind of live chat discussions you should be creating with your people and with guests, click here.
Dealing with Inappropriate Comments
While the vast majority of commenters engage with our service in order to grow spiritually, a few of them either want to cause trouble or do so inadvertently due to their own pain and brokenness.
As moderators, we want to both serve these broken people, helping them to grow while at the same time creating a good experience where everyone can move forward on their spiritual journey.
When someone posts an inappropriate comment, here are the steps to take:
Delete it immediately.
If necessary/appropriate post a follow-up comment in the chat about what happened.
Initiate a one-on-one chat with the commenter, explain what the issue with their comment is, and ask them to refrain from posting similar comments. If help or resources are needed, be sure to provide those.
If the person continues to post inappropriate comments, mute them and post their username and a brief explanation of what happened in Slack or any other app you use to document and communicate live streaming issues with your tech team.
That, of course, begs the question, “What constitutes an inappropriate comment?” There are some guidelines below, but there are a lot of comments that are borderline or open to interpretation.
Decisions on questionable comments should be left up to the lead moderator for the service. One criteria to use on questionable comments is if there are repeated issues or it’s a one-time thing.
What constitutes an inappropriate comment?
Disparaging remarks about any group of people based on their race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, religion, socio-economic status, etc.
If someone has a genuine question or concern, then it would be appropriate to respond to that person rather than delete the comment. If you’re concerned it’s going to derail the chat, offer to continue the conversation 1-on-1 rather than continuing it in the chat.
However, if someone says that a particular group of people are going to “burn in hell,” then you need to delete that.
Overly vulgar or inappropriate language
This doesn’t mean that anytime someone uses a swear word we need to delete the comment. Let’s say someone says, “I’m so frustrated about my son. We did everything we could to raise him well. We paid for his college, but then he moved home and hasn’t had a job for 10 months. I’ve encouraged him to look for one and even offered to put him in touch with people I know, but he just sits on his ass all day and plays video games.” That’s a hurting parent. We need to offer to pray for them and maybe offer to connect them with a counselor for them and/or their son to provide help. Let’s be more concerned about the hurting person than the fact that they said a naughty word.
But, of course, when someone says, “Screw you!” we need to delete that.
Threats - If someone makes a threat, screenshot the comment before deleting it so that we can potentially track it down later if needed. Report any threats made to the service lead, and our Guardian Ministry immediately. They will evaluate and respond in any way that requires action or mandated reporting.
Political Content & Commentary
We don’t need to delete every comment where someone expresses a concern about the government or the state of the US, but we also don’t want the chat to devolve into a political debate. Comments like, “I’m concerned about the partisanship in Washington” might be left alone or simply given a gentle redirect (towards prayer is a good place).
Any comments like “Vote for Trump,” “Republicans are evil,” etc. need to be deleted immediately.
Too Much Information
We want the chat to be a place where people can be real. If they’re struggling or hurting and are willing to be vulnerable, we should encourage that. If someone showed up to a campus on the weekend and wanted to talk about their struggle with drugs, we wouldn’t silence them and tell them this isn’t the place for that.
At the same time we wouldn’t want them to stand in the lobby screaming about it or grabbing every person who walked by to talk about it, as those people may or may not be equipped to have that kind of conversation. If someone is bringing up an issue that seems like it might be too sensitive, rather than deleting the comment or continuing the conversation in the public chat, let them know that you’d love to help them out and over to chat 1-on-1 and then initiate that chat.
In this scenario deleting comments or muting someone should only be done as a last resort if they persist in posting things that will distract from others’ experience and/or they refuse help.
Impersonation - Obviously, people don’t have to use their real name for the chat, but we don’t want people impersonating celebrities, well known pastors, politicians, Gene, etc. If someone makes a one-time joke--let’s say they make their screen name Mark Hamill and post “May the force be with you.”--you don’t necessarily have to do anything about it. But if they persist or keep asking to speak with “Pastor Chewbacca”, then they need to be banned.
Final Comments:
Cut and paste and use any of this to your heart’s content.
Join me for my Facebook Live tomorrow for a biblical insight that will give you lot of hope, a new hack for increasing engagement in live chat, and our latest thoughts on onboarding volunteers online during the quarantine and beyond.
See you on the digital climb,
