The iFocus Marketing Guide to Combating Spam On Facebook

Employing a Few Best Practices Can Keep Your Social Media Marketing Strategy On Track

Your Facebook page is your company’s digital hang-out spot where you can engage with your audience, build brand awareness, and advertise your goods and services. When correctly leveraged, social media marketing on Facebook yields a significant return on investment that helps you meet your business goals.

However, as with any large online platform, Facebook is also a prime target for spam. At minimum, spam is a minor annoyance. Robust spam tactics are more impactful, disrupting user engagement, tarnishing brand reputation, and derailing your social media marketing strategy.

So, what spam tactics warrant concern? And what are the best ways to keep spammers in check?

What Is Facebook Spam?

Facebook spam is a form of platform abuse conducted by a select group of users and bot accounts. Spam content is typically repetitive, designed to annoy or deceive people, or aimed at promoting irrelevant products and services.

Facebook Spam vs. Facebook Scams: What’s the Difference?

While Facebook spam and scams are often related, they serve different purposes. Here’s how to differentiate between the two:

• Facebook spam: Spamming typically refers to irrelevant, bulk content that is posted without permission, usually in comments or direct messages. Spam promotes products, services, or links that have nothing to do with the post in question or the page owner’s content. Although most spam poses little risk to users, many find it disruptive and annoying.
• Facebook scams: Scams are fraudulent activities that deceive users into giving away personal information, money, or access to their accounts. Common scams include phishing links, fake offers, and impersonating legitimate businesses. Unlike spam, scams intend to cause direct harm to users.

How Facebook Spam Affects Your Social Media Marketing

Although Facebook spam is less threatening than scams, these unsolicited communications present numerous drawbacks to social media managers and business owners. Here’s how spam affects social media marketing on Facebook.

• Spam disrupts engagement: Spam disrupts meaningful interactions between businesses and their followers by cluttering comment sections and posts with irrelevant content.
• Spam damages credibility: Frequent spam on a company’s Facebook page can damage the company’s reputation, making it appear less credible or unprofessional.
• Spam poses a security risk: Some spam messages may contain malicious links that lead to phishing attacks, malware, or viruses, which can compromise a user’s information or a company’s private data.
• Spam wastes resources: Dealing with spam takes time and effort, diverting resources away from meaningful business activities.
• Spam deters followers: Excessive spam can frustrate legitimate followers, causing disengagement with the brand or loss of page followers.

How to Spot Facebook Spam

Facebook spam is always in flux, taking on various forms to increase the chances of deceiving users. Business owners who are familiar with the most common types of Facebook spam are better equipped to identify it.

Link Spam

This type of spam includes unsolicited links in comments or posts, directing users to external websites. These links may lead to irrelevant content, promotional offers, or even malicious websites designed to collect user information.

Characteristics of link spam can include:

• Links that are out of context or unrelated to the post or conversation.
• Repeated posting of the same link across multiple posts or pages.
• Links accompanied by vague, generic, or unrelated text.

Fake Promotions or Giveaways

Scammers and spammers often post fake promotions, giveaways, or contests designed to trick users into clicking links or sharing their personal information.

Characteristics of fake promotions can include:

• An offer that is too good to be true, such as “FREE iPhone to the FIRST 5 people who comment!”
• Promising a large prize without clear rules or legitimate business backing.

Duplicate or Irrelevant Comments

Spammers often flood comment sections with irrelevant or repetitive comments to hijack user engagement and promote their own content.

Characteristics of comment spam can include:

• Comments that don’t make sense in the context of the post.
• Repeated use of the same comment across multiple posts or pages.
• Promoting unrelated products or services, often with poor grammar in the written message itself.

Clickbait Posts

Clickbait posts lure users into clicking on a link by making sensational, misleading, or exaggerated claims using enticing language.

Characteristics of clickbait include:

• Over-the-top headlines, such as “You won’t believe what happens next!”
• Misleading content that doesn’t match the linked article or post.
• Posts that request users to “Click here for a shocking reveal!” with no real substance.

Mass Tagging or Mentioning

Spammers often tag large numbers of users in posts or comments to draw attention to spammy content or fake promotions.

Characteristics mass tagging include:

• Unsolicited tagging of multiple users, often without any personal connection.
• Posts that mention random people to promote irrelevant content.

7 Tips to Combat Spam and Safeguard Your Social Media Marketing Strategy

If you think of your Facebook page as your company’s digital front yard, spam represents the weeds invading and degrading its curb appeal. By proactively addressing the problem, you create a better Facebook experience for your audience and reduce your risk to spam-related issues.

Set Up Facebook Filters

Spammers use specific buzzwords, phrases, URL patterns, and emojis to attract attention. Typically, spammers will comment “Claim your prize!” or “Special deal” to trick users into thinking they’ve won something. They also use suspicious links such as “goo.gl” and “bit.ly.” Facebook allows page owners to filter out spam keywords, phrases, and URL patterns so that they never appear in your inbox or comments section.

Limit Countries That Can See Your Page

If you run a local business based in the Midwest, Facebook interactions from accounts based in Russia or India is highly suspect. Spam originating from foreign countries isn’t new. In fact, Facebook previously reported that Bangladesh, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, and numerous other countries were the source of inauthentic likes, comments, and other spam tactics. You can reduce your risk to foreign Facebook spam by limiting what countries can see your page.

Block Suspicious and Low-Quality Domains

Facebook spammers are notorious for sharing untrusted and low-quality domains, which usually host spammy content or scam activities. Examples include:

• click4prize.com
• getprize.net
• freeprizeonline.com
• claimreward.com
• verifyaccount.com

Facebook’s platform allows page owners to block specific domains so that your audience never sees them in the comments.

Moderate Your Page

Regularly check your page’s comment sections for spammy content and remove anything that is irrelevant or harmful. If a specific account keeps spamming your page, block and report the account to Facebook. This removes the account from your page and signals Facebook to take action.

If you manage a Facebook page with a large audience, consider assigning multiple admins or moderators to help monitor and combat spam. Having multiple sets of eyes on your page ensures that spam is promptly and efficiently handled.

Limit Tagging and Mentions

You can control who can tag or mention your page by adjusting your page settings. Limiting tags and mentions reduces the chance of your page being targeted by mass tagging spam.

Turn On Comment Ranking

Facebook offers a comment ranking feature that prioritizes comments with the most interactions or relevance. This feature helps push spam comments to the bottom of the comment thread, making them less visible to users.

Use a Dedicated Landing Page For Giveaways

Giveaways are an effective marketing tactic that boost audience engagement. The challenge users face is differentiating an authentic giveaway from spam. Page managers can overcome this hurdle by creating a landing page to enter the giveaway as opposed to commenting on the post. Giveaway landing pages also lighten your moderation workload by reducing the volume of Facebook comments.

Searching For an Expert In Facebook Marketing In Kansas City? Contact iFocus

Spam links, false promises, and too-good-to-be-true offers from bot accounts make for a poor social media experience. When left unchecked, Facebook spam can increase in frequency and scope.

Best-case scenario: The spam annoys your audience to the point where they’re discouraged from interacting with your page.

Worst-case scenario: You or one of your followers clicks a malicious link or falls prey to a cyberattack, hurting your business reputation in the process.

As a digital agency that specializes in social media marketing on Facebook, iFocus can help you implement spam and scam prevention best practices to protect your online presence. These safeguards not only keep social media marketing strategies on track, but more importantly, they foster meaningful audience engagement and help develop trust.

Take the first step toward improving your audience’s social media experience by contacting our digital marketing company.