There will be times when rather than encouraging people to comment on your social media posts, you need to restrict or ensure no comments can be posted at all. This could be for a number of reasons such as the posts are purely announcements or if they could provoke trolls, hate speech or negative interactions. In this article we look at the three main platforms and see what options they offer.

Instagram

In Instagram, you can change who can leave comments by clicking on the cog in the top right of your profile page and selecting privacy and settings. In the settings menu, scroll down to Comments and you can allow comments from Everyone, People you follow, Your followers or People you follow and your followers. You can change this at any time.

Another option is to restrict accounts. You can use this option if you don’t want to block or unfollow people that you know. Click into their profile and the three dots at the top right and in this menu, click Restrict. This is a great option as they won’t be notified that this has happened, you can review their comments and approve them (or not) based on the content and your activity status will be hidden. Only you and them can see their comments.

In the same menu, on their profile, you have the option to block or report depending on what they have posted on your account.

Finally, you do have the option of making your account private which means that only followers that you approve can see your photos and videos.

Facebook

In Facebook, you can control who comments on individual posts. Click on the post and select Who can comment on your post. The options are: Public, Established followers, Profiles and Pages you follow or Profiles and Pages you mention. Within a Facebook group it is slightly different but you will have the option to turn off commenting.

You can also click on the dots next to an individual comment and either hide or report it.

If you don’t have time to monitor each post, you can select Audience and Visibility, then Followers and public content and in Who can comment on your public posts you can choose Public, Friends or Friends of friends.

If you have identified certain individuals who are trolling you then you can click on their profile and either block or report them.

X (Formerly Twitter)

In X, you can choose who can reply to your post. If you are writing a post within X then select the little globe at the bottom and it will tell you who can reply. Either Everyone, Accounts you follow, Verified accounts or Only accounts you mention. If you use a scheduling tool like Buffer or Hootsuite then you can just visit your profile on X and change who can comment after the post has been published. Simply click the three dots in the right-hand corner of your post and Change who can reply.

Currently there doesn’t seem to be an option to select a default setting for who can reply to your posts.

The other option is to block or report individual profiles which you can do by clicking on the dots at the top right of their post.

We hope the above gives you confidence to use social media. You may also be interested in our articles on related subjects:

• https://www.reddesk.co.uk/negative-comments-on-social-media/
• https://www.reddesk.co.uk/brand-awareness-social-media-reflect-business-brand/
• https://www.reddesk.co.uk/mental-health-tips-working-in-social-media/

If you need some assistance in managing your social media either from an Online Reputation Management perspective or just for some ideas on how to post then please do get in touch at mel@reddesk.co.uk.