Moderating my closed Facebook group: behind the scenes

A few weeks ago, I worked on making my group more visible. But this week, I wanted to make myself more visible in my group as a moderator.

Moderating a Facebook group, even a smaller one, is no simple task. I can’t imagine how the thousands of professional Facebook content moderators handle it — actually, it appears they’re not handling it so well at all, in the mental wellbeing category. But they do an amazing job keeping my feed clean of disturbing content.

In my closed Facebook group, Autoimmune Grad Students, I don’t encounter any unconquerable problems at all. No rude comments, no rule-breaking and certainly no pending posts with disturbing content. But my rules, guidelines and moderating approach are still imperative, and I wanted to take the time to revisit them as a proactive measure.

So, I decided to take a step that felt bold for me (a super private social media user): I recorded a video of myself and posted it in the group. I felt the need to post a video because videos represent a connectivity bridge between online users, as William Craig illuminates in his article:

“Video content creates pure connectivity. … Video does what text doesn’t. It creates an immediate, real and authentic route of interaction and connectivity with audience members.”

Additionally, Craig shared that 95% of people retain video content while just 10% retain content that they read. If there is one thing I have learned as a communicator, it’s to tap into online trends and capitalize on connection methods.

In my video, I explained:

1. How and when I moderate
2. My content creation process, and why it reflects themes within the group
3. Why I don’t employ automatic membership approval or automatic post approval
4. The role group rules play in the community

Typically, for any public videos I publish, I have an outline of what I want to say. But for this video, I set out to communicate vulnerability and authenticity. So, I left my hair in a messy bun, pulled on my fuzzy bathrobe, and in non-Samantha style, I just pressed record.

Check out my video here.

Next, as promised in my video, I posted a fun infographic I created so that group members could revisit the community rules and guidelines:

I shared the group’s rules because they are intertwined with my role as a moderator. As mentioned in this week’s lecture, a thriving community’s rules and guidelines are “at the heart of all the decisions [moderators] make in making people feel safe.”

A good social media group moderator is not just responsive, engaged and in tune with their members, but grounded in strategically-created community rules and guidelines. When I created my group’s rules and guidelines at its birth, I dedicated myself to keeping them at the center of my content creation and moderating techniques.

So far, I think I’m doing a good job. After posting my video this week, I received a comment from a group member saying I make the Autoimmune Grad Students group a safe and welcoming space:

Her comment truly made my day. In reminding my group members of my role in the group, they reminded me why I created the group in the first place: to build relationships in a safe digital space that exudes encouragement and authenticity.