Did you know that there’s a way for you to proactively moderate your brand’s Facebook page…before posts are even written by your audience? If you’re on admin-level for your brand’s page, you are able to make some simple changes that will not allow certain words to be posted on your page. For faith-based brands, this is also helpful in addition to the profanity-blocker (you can see how to block profanity here).

To create a list of blocked words, you can click here for step-by-step instructions from Facebook’s site. Here’s some tips to help you utilize this feature:

–Protect your audience: If you cater to families, this tool is a great idea because it prevents questionable posts from being posted directly to your wall. While the profanity filter filters out traditional curse words, the moderation tool can also filter out  additional words that would be questionable for your specific audience. You also have the ability to add words that may be more recent than the ones filtered out by the profanity filter (for example, if you notice new slang words being used by younger members of the community that are inappropriate).

–Prevent bullying: On some Facebook pages, there are spammers or members who target other members of the online community with hurtful or offensive words. You can add these types of words to the moderation tool to prevent their comments from appearing. Please note that although the moderator hides the comment from your community group or page, it does not hide it from the commenter’s friends and their personal page.

-Filter out irrelevant discussions: If you notice topics being brought up on the community page that are not related to your brand or company, you can add those words to the “blacklist” to help narrow things down. Obviously, you don’t want to be too heavy-handed in this area, as it can stifle productive discussions, but it can be a useful tool for more general topics.

There are several “blacklist” versions on the internet currently (you can see one here), which are helpful to cut and paste, but many of the words are offensive, and even reading through such a list can be a headache!

We have done the work for you, by carefully curating a list that is more applicable for faith-based brands.  You may still want to weed through the list to make it more specific to your needs.  By utilizing this simple step of cutting-and-pasting a blacklist, you can help nourish a stronger online community on your Facebook page:

Download our free list of FrontGate’s Christian friendly list of Terms-to-Block in a CSV file that can be opened in any text or spreadsheet program.

For more on social media, inquire about FrontGate’s complete social media management and audience growth services.