It’s not often that I start off a new post with a disclaimer (of sorts), but before I tell you 6 ways to control what the average Facebook user can post on your Facebook Business Page, I do need to acknowledge the fact that your Facebook Page – and social media in general – is meant to be an open, communicative medium between you and your customers. Meaning, it’s almost a violation of social media ‘best practices’ to limit communication between you and a customer. However, I recognize that for some business owners, and perhaps certain industries, having the ability to “lock down” aspects of their Facebook Page is either a necessity or the only way they’ll ever sign on to building a presence for their business on Facebook.

6 Ways to Lock Down your Facebook Page

The great thing about controlling most aspects of your Facebook Page is that most of the ways to setup and control your Page are included in the Settings area. The Settings area is a place where I encourage all business owners to spend some time because other features like how your comments are sorted (Top vs. Most Recent) and turning on the ability to post in multiple languages are located there.

Let’s start with Visitor Posts. If you click on the Edit link on the right of any of these Page Settings, you can adjust them. Within Visitor Posts, you can choose between allowing Page visitors to publish on your Page or to disable the ability for Page visitors (meaning, any Facebook user) to publish posts on your Page. If you choose to allow posts on the Page, within that, you can also choose if a post needs to be approved before becoming visible on the Page.

Note: “Publishing posts” on your Facebook Page is not the same as leaving a comment. This refers to the Visitor Posts section located in the right sidebar of your Page (desktop).

Beneath the Visitor Posts section is the Reviews section. Quite simply, you can turn on or off the ability for Facebook users to give your business a star rating and review. All published reviews are public.

Moving down the list of Settings from there, there are 2 Settings related to Facebook users being able to tag photos and videos published by your Page (Tagging Ability) and if people and other Business Pages are allowed to tag you in their posts (Others Tagging this Page). 

Scrolling down a bit more, you’ll find Page Moderation and Profanity Filter. 

To use the Page Moderation feature, simply add the words, separated by commas, that you want blocked. If someone tries to publish a post or comment that includes any of those words, they won’t be able to until they remove the word from their post or comment.

To use the Profanity Filter, you can select from Medium or Strong options. Facebook does not provide a list of what words are included for each choice, however.

If you are business owner who has been wary of creating a Facebook Page for your business due to fear of what a random Facebook user could post on your Business Page, hopefully enabling some or all of these Page Settings helps you to feel more comfortable about it.