Skip to main content

A Facebook Trick To Avoid MOS Teo Ser Luck's Recent Facebook Gaffe

MOS Teo said he didn't post the following quote on Facebook-
"I learnt that some workers prefer to sleep without a mattress as they are used to it back in their home country".
The above quote that appeared with the photo in the Ministry of Manpower Facebook Page came under heavy criticism for being insensitive to the plight of migrant workers in Singapore.

It created that much furore to have the story appear on BBC website.

The Ministry of Manpower has issued a statement that the post and the caption was put up by an unnamed Facebook admin.

The question of many, especially the government ministry, must be asking how to approve a post before it goes "live" on the Page.

Unfortunately, Facebook doesn't allow this function for any of the roles assigned for the Facebook Page.

You could put a post on draft and get the other key stakeholders to sign off in the comments, but once you publish the draft post, the comments can be seen. With this method, the Facebook admin or editor could be prone to further gaffes when they forget to put the post on draft first and every Likes get to see the comments not meant for public consumption.

As each stakeholder is an admin or editor, you probably won't know who approved what.

Another popular method is to email the draft post, but that doesn't have the Facebook feel to it. In a government agency, waiting for an email approval might take tons of back and forth replies and the post becomes yesteryear's news.

So what can you do to get stakeholders to sign off or approve a Facebook post before it goes "live"?

All the state secrets in a Secret Group

The trick I have learnt is that you create a Secret Group and add all the stakeholders as members.

If you are the Facebook Admin or Editor, you can post the photo with captions or post into this Secret Group and get the Group Members to sign off or approval. Once the post is approve, replicate it in the Page for public consumption.

The good thing about a group is that you can see the real names behind the sign off or approval.

Since the group is Secret, any comments are confined to the group. Of course, if somebody choose to screenshot the Secret communication, he/she should be threaten for violating the Official Secret Acts.

Another advantage of creating the Facebook Group is it gives the look and feel of a Facebook Page but only visible by members. The Facebook Group app is also available in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store and stakeholders can be notified when post is up and requires approval before posting on the page.

This simple trick could probably save Singapore ministers from future social media gaffes.

So, you're welcome!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Singapore radio personality in "hot soup" for reporting train delays based on Tweets?

Update - Hossan Leong has commented on this post to say " I'm not in trouble pls don't blow this out of proportion. Let it rest. It's getting silly. Thank you for your love and concern and I apologize for any misunderstanding." ~  Hossan Leong. Hossan Leong, a Singapore radio personality for The Gold Breakfast Show on Gold 90.5, was censured today for reporting on train delays on the Circle Line because he based the information on Tweets, rather than waiting for the official reports from the Circle Line operator, SMRT.  It is, however, unknown if the "warning" came from Mediacorp producers or SMRT. Tweeted Hossan Leong ,  OK...I reported it on air and now I'm getting into trouble for it?? The CC line is DOWN rite? I did nothing wrong rite? The SMRT Circle Line was reported to be down this morning during peak hours and started as early as 7am. However, local news only received official statement was received by the mainstream media at about 9...
14 comments
Read more

DBS Bank – One Tweet too little too late.

(Updated post - DBS apologise with the 3Rs – Will social media bite? ) It was the bluest Monday for DBS/POS Bank in its entire banking history when more than 1000 of their ATM and online banking services were taken offline due to a software upgrade an outage (PR announced that it was down due to software upgrade, but the outsourcer, IBM, later claimed it was an outage). So on that Monday, DBS decided to sign up onto Twitter and post a 140 characters one-liner onto Twitter to post a one liner to inform the Twitterverse of the down time. Everybody knows that if you just create a new account on Twitter, you would start off with 0 friends. How would you be able to inform the Twitterverse if you start with 0 friends? DBS Bank did something smart to insert the #dbs and #posb and that probably drew some attention to this account. However, the effectiveness of the tweet was lacking as it drew only 28 retweets. As of this posting, DBS Bank attracted 274 followers. A letter to T...
9 comments
Read more

New field in SocialPR: Social Media Crisis Communications

I have been busy with family for the Lunar New Year week but it seem the Singapore blog-o-sphere was active, and is still is, about recently formed Association of Bloggers (Singapore), ABS for short. To cut a long story short, the announcement of ABS via mainstream media didn’t go down well with Singapore bloggers and in the end resulted in some speculation to why ABS was set-up in the first place. A post by the ABS president defending herself against a harsh criticism from a blogger added to the bad start and created even more speculation that ABS was set-up with an ulterior motive. A week later, some founding members of the pro-team started posting up notice of resignation on their blogs and this just added fuel to fire. Again, a story of ABS appeared in mainstream media and this lead to even more disgruntled bloggers asking why the president isn’t responding via her blog or the association’s blog. I also responded to a post about the ABS incident. You can catch a summary of...
6 comments
Read more