Dominating Facebook Fan

Has anyone experienced a "Fan" on your Facebook page where the resident is dominating every post? They will comment on every topic, share their opinions positive or negative, provide suggestions and are always there!! We love vocal residents like this, but can it be a negative experience for your other fans? Will it turn the others away because they are frustrated by the constant display of comments or will they be curious to see what that resident will say next? If you have a resident who is dominating your Facebook page how are you handling the positive or negative approach or does it even matter?

At the end of the day I find Facebook to be an amazing tool to have multiple conversations with my residents that I did not have before. What I would hate to see happen is a resident dominating our Facebook page and then it becomes a one-one conversation rather than a conversation as a community. Would be interested to hear your experiences with resident activity on your Facebook pages. So are you experiencing the Dominating Facebook Fan at your community?

Hi Kim, that's an interesting problem to have and I have to say not one I have experienced. It's great that you are getting fans in the first place and barring some severely negative conversation, this odd commenter might actually increase interest in the site among your other "curious" residents. Aside from that, I have found in other similar circumstances that if you have other active participants they tend to help moderate. This could happen with a brief comment designed to get the conversation back on track. If this doesn't organically solve itself, and you feel the comments are having the effect of keeping your other residents at bay, you may have to gently suggest that this resident allow some of the conversation to go on uninterrupted. I hope you get a few more responses; I am interested in whether or not someone has actually dealt with this very topic and how they were able to resolve it.

Thanks Peter for jumping in! There are many conversations about how to get engaging fans, but not many on how to handle engaging fans who are let's say "running the show". Like I stated Facebook has been an amazing tool to connect with so many in our community in one place, but no one wants a control freak including the rest of our fans! Many at first would jump in & fight back on the negative...my resident panel, and many would discuss can't wait to see what they write next, but recently it seems to be a little overbearing. This is when I started to get concerned with tone & action. You don't want to deter this resident from being so active and vocal, but at the same time you don't want them to take control over your own page! Our page has always been active, fun & good conversations and I want to keep it that way. At this point do you send the resident a private message? Will that message be taken the wrong way where they get mad, remove themselves from the page & then spread the bad word of mouth to others? No one really talks about how to handle this part of the viral world in our industry. Maybe we need to watch & learn from outside our industry to see how other brands deal with this type of social interaction.

It is so difficult to get people to participate in open forums like Facebook, that I would be looking at ways to engage a prolific poster, not shut them up. Perhaps having a "volunteer resident problem solver" and then provide them with guidelines for them to post according to might be one way to handle it.

I think a person who is like that has leadership qualities, and you need to make sure they are leading the way you would like, rather than being a renegade, and the easiest way to do that is to "bring them into the fold".

Not knowing exactly how far this fan has crossed the line, I am a little gun-shy about making any direct recommendations. From your tone, it sounds like you're getting to the end of your rope and that he will soon be going too far. If you are a moderator to the page, you have every right to step in and remind this fan of web etiquette. I guess you will need to weigh the impact of letting him continue versus the possibility of him (I guess it could be a her) badmouth you, the community or both. Just fyi, I tweeted this to my followers on Twitter to see if we could get some additional insights. Let's see what comes through. Are you on LinkedIn? If so, let's connect there too.