| Course | BU 439 Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategy |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 7 |
| Paper type | Community management plan |
| Length | About 900 words, 6 pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Herzing University |
| Program | BS in Marketing |
| Updated | September 2026 |
Free sample paper for BU 439 Unit 7
Criticism Stays Up, Children's Names Come Down: A Community Management Plan for a Composite Toledo Roller Rink, With Five Tiers of Messages and Two People Who May Answer
Student Name
Business, Herzing University
BU 439: Digital and Social Media Marketing Strategy
Instructor Name
April 8, 2026
Criticism Stays Up, Children's Names Come Down: A Community Management Plan for a Composite Toledo Roller Rink, With Five Tiers of Messages and Two People Who May Answer
What Happens After a Post
Skyline Skate Center, the family-owned rink this course has followed since the audit, now publishes regularly on four channels and has a partner skater bringing new followers. Each post invites replies: questions about parties, praise, complaints, and sometimes reports of something that went wrong on the skating floor. The audit found 31 reviews in three months with three answered, and eleven party questions under flyers with four answered. This plan sets out the rules the community will be held to, sorts arriving messages into tiers with a response time for each, names who may speak for the rink and says what is done when a reply makes things worse.
Homburg et al. (2015) found in a study of online communities that firms' active participation improved customer sentiment, but that the benefit flattened as participation grew, so more replying is not always better. The plan therefore aims for timely, useful answers rather than a reply to every comment.
Published Rules
A short set of rules is pinned on Facebook, linked from Instagram's profile and posted on the website. Everyone is held to the same rules, including the rink.
1. Criticism of the rink stays up, including harsh criticism. 2. Comments are removed if they contain threats, hate speech, harassment of a named person, spam or sexual content. 3. Personal information about children, such as full names, schools or photographs posted without a parent's consent, is removed, and the poster is contacted privately. 4. Staff are not named or tagged in complaints; concerns about staff go to the owner by message. 5. Anyone whose comment is removed receives a private message saying which rule applied.
Rule 1 matters most for trust. A rink that deletes complaints teaches its audience that the page shows only what the rink wants seen, and the audit's review history shows that people who cannot complain on the page complain on Google instead.
Tiers and Response Times
Every incoming comment, message and review is placed in one of five tiers, with a response time measured during the rink's open hours.
| Tier | What it covers | Response time | Who responds | Where |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Safety and serious concern | Injury reports, harassment allegations, a lost child, threats, anything involving police or a lawyer | Within 1 hour when open; by 9 a.m. if it arrives overnight | Owner only | One short public reply, then private |
| 2. Booking and service | Party questions, prices, hours, lost property | Within 4 open hours | Floor manager or owner | Public answer if useful to others; details by message |
| 3. Complaints and negative reviews | Service, cleanliness, prices, crowding, a bad experience | Within 24 hours | Owner | Public reply, then private if needed |
| 4. Praise and general comments | Thanks, photos, memories, questions about music | Within 3 days | Floor manager | Public |
| 5. Spam and rule breaches | Links, scams, abuse | Same day | Floor manager | Removed, logged, private note where rule 5 applies |
Who May Speak for the Rink
Two people may speak for Skyline online: the owner and the floor manager, each within the tiers assigned above. Other staff may share rink posts from their own accounts, but may not answer complaints or questions on the rink's behalf, since a well-meant reply from a skate guard can promise something the rink cannot do. The partner skater is not a spokesperson; if her followers raise complaints in her comments, she passes them to the owner rather than answering for the rink.
Tone follows three rules. Replies are signed with a first name, because a named person reads as accountable. They acknowledge the specific problem before explaining anything. And they never argue facts in public, which rarely persuades the complainant and always looks defensive to everyone else reading.
Where Community Management Ends
Community management and customer service overlap, and the boundary is drawn so nothing falls between them. A question answered once in public, such as the party price, becomes part of the Facebook content plan so the next parent finds it without asking. A problem that needs a refund, a replacement or a change to a booking leaves the public channel and is handled by the owner through the booking system, with the outcome noted in the log. Tuten and Solomon (2018) describe social channels as places where service happens in public view, which means every private resolution should still end with a short public note in the original thread, such as "Sorted by phone, thank you for telling us," so readers see that the problem was handled.
When a Reply Makes Things Worse
Some replies will backfire. The plan sets a procedure rather than leaving it to judgment in the moment. After two public exchanges with the same person on the same complaint, the rink stops replying publicly and offers a phone call or a meeting with the owner, with a direct number. The critical comment is left up. If others join in, the owner posts one factual update in the thread, such as what the rink has changed, and does not reply further in that thread. The owner and floor manager then review what went wrong within a week and record it in a short log.
An example shows the procedure. A parent posts that her son fell during a party and staff did not help. The owner replies within the hour under Tier 1, saying she is sorry he was hurt and asking to speak by phone. The parent responds angrily that she wants a public explanation. The owner replies once more, saying that the rink has reviewed the incident with the floor staff and will call her today. After that, no further public reply is made, and the conversation continues privately. Van Noort and Willemsen (2012) found that responding to negative comments, especially when a customer has asked for help, can improve how onlookers view a brand, but the benefit depends on the response sounding human and helpful rather than scripted, and on not turning a thread into a debate. Skyline Skate Center, its staff and the example are composites for this course.
References
Homburg, C., Ehm, L., & Artz, M. (2015). Measuring and managing consumer sentiment in an online community environment. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 629-641. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.11.0448
Tuten, T. L., & Solomon, M. R. (2018). Social media marketing (3rd ed.). SAGE.
Van Noort, G., & Willemsen, L. M. (2012). Online damage control: The effects of proactive versus reactive webcare interventions in consumer-generated and brand-generated platforms. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 26(3), 131-140. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2011.07.001
The Herzing BU 439 Unit 7 instructions
In Unit 7, BU 439 asks students to write a community management plan for an organization's social channels. Common requirements include published community rules, categories of incoming messages with response times, the people authorized to respond, tone guidelines, escalation for serious issues and a plan for situations where a response makes matters worse. Many instructors ask how community management relates to customer service. Example comments are usually acceptable if composite. Response times should be realistic for the staff available, and the plan should say what happens outside opening hours, when messages still arrive. The plan generally appears as rules, a tier table and procedures, set out in APA 7. Strong plans explain why criticism is not simply deleted and how private resolutions are reflected publicly.
Inside the BU 439 Unit 7 example
The plan opens with the audit's evidence of unanswered reviews and questions and cites research on the limits of firm participation. Five published rules are listed, with the reason for keeping criticism visible. A five-tier table sets response times, responders and whether each tier is handled publicly or privately. A spokesperson section limits who may speak for the rink and sets three tone rules. A boundary section explains how questions, refunds and bookings move between community management and service. The final section sets a procedure for replies that backfire and walks through an injury complaint, then cites research on how responses to negative comments affect onlookers.
Reading the BU 439 Unit 7 rubric
Community management rubrics at Herzing usually reward clear public rules, a workable triage system, defined authority, sound escalation and practical handling of difficult situations, plus writing and APA. Rules earn full credit when published, specific and applied to everyone. Triage scores highest when categories have response times that match their seriousness and the staff available. Authority is judged on naming who may respond and who may not. Escalation rewards separate handling of safety and legal matters. The difficult-situations criterion pays for a concrete procedure, ideally with an example, for when a reply goes wrong. Instructors often credit plans that protect vulnerable people, such as children, in public threads.
Common BU 439 Unit 7 mistakes, and how to avoid them
Community plans often lose points by promising to respond to everything immediately, which a small staff cannot sustain. Another common problem is having no published rules, so removals look arbitrary. Students frequently allow any employee to reply, which leads to inconsistent or risky answers. Some plans delete negative comments, which usually moves complaints elsewhere and damages trust. Safety issues are often treated like ordinary complaints. Plans rarely say what to do when a reply makes a thread worse. Finally, examples drawn from a real workplace can identify customers or staff; composite examples written for the paper avoid privacy problems while showing the same judgment.
Get a BU 439 Unit 7 example written to your instructions
Send the Unit 7 instructions and the rubric from your BU 439 classroom, plus the brand or scenario the assignment supplies. We write a custom example that publishes its rules first, attaches a consequence to each, sets response times by tier and includes the reply that made everything worse. First custom sample free, back in 24 to 48 hours.
More BU 439 papers and marketing samples
- BU 439 Unit 1: Digital presence audit
- BU 439 Unit 2: Channel selection rationale
- BU 439 Unit 3: Content strategy per platform
- BU 439 Unit 4: Content calendar
- BU 439 Unit 5: Paid campaign plan
- BU 439 Unit 6: Influencer or partnership plan
- BU 439 Unit 8: Measurement framework
- BU 321 Unit 7: Regression output interpretation
- BU 380 Unit 7: Governance and obligations memo
- BU 421 Unit 7: Quality control chart record
- BU 423 Unit 7: Funding option comparison
BU 439 Unit 7 questions, answered
How fast should the response times be?
Fast enough to be worth stating and slow enough that the staffing in your own plan could deliver them. Tie each figure to the coverage hours you name, and say what happens outside those hours rather than leaving a promise that quietly assumes somebody is always watching. A modest commitment the plan can keep scores better than an ambitious one it cannot.
Do I need real examples of comments?
Constructed ones are fine and usually safer, provided you say they are constructed. Write the kinds of message this firm would genuinely receive, including the awkward ones, and set the approved reply beside each. Public comments on a brand's own page can be quoted with attribution, though paraphrasing is often cleaner than reproducing somebody's words inside a graded document.
Where does community management stop and customer service begin?
Wherever your plan says it does, and saying so is part of the grade. Most plans hand anything involving an account, an order or a refund to the service function while keeping the public acknowledgment, which means the handover has to be written down: what gets said publicly, where the conversation moves and who confirms it was resolved.
Where can I find a free BU 439 Unit 7 sample paper?
This page offers the whole BU 439 Unit 7 community management plan free, with the published rules, the five-tier table, the worked example and margin notes. If your organization or channels differ, share the prompt and a free custom plan is drafted, generally within two days.
How fast should responses be in BU 439 Unit 7?
Fast enough for the seriousness of the message and realistic for the staff. The sample answers safety concerns within an hour, booking questions within four open hours, complaints within a day and general comments within three days.