How We Moderate: Our Process, Team and Coverage

Content moderation is most effective when it works like an extension of your own team. That's the approach we take. Trained human moderators review comments, messages and posts on your owned and earned social media channels, following guidelines we build with you. They escalate items that require your attention and provide you with feedback and guidance on how to handle tricky situations.

We have done this for over 20 years with clients including ABC News, Beachbody, and Andersen Windows. This page explains how we onboard a new client, details a typical day with us, identifies who makes decisions, and describes who the moderators are.

Online Moderation moderator smiling as she types on her laptop at her desk

20+ yearsof human moderation
24/7coverage, 365 days a year
Multiplelanguages covered
8+ yearsaverage moderator tenure

Why Online Moderation

Brands of every size work with us because we are easy to work with, we are experienced, and our moderators genuinely engage within your community rather than just enforcing rules.

A small team gathered around a laptop, smiling and talking through a plan together

Easy to work with

You choose the services, channels and hours you need, from weekend coverage to 24/7. You get a named lead moderator, and we work inside the tools you already use.

Long-term experience

We have run moderation and social customer care for more than 20 years. Our global, multilingual team has an average tenure of more than 8 years, so your moderators have seen it all before.

Real engagement

Our moderators do more than ban, hide, and delete. They answer questions, join conversations and add value, on your branded accounts and in third-party posts and threads where your brand comes up.

Week one: guidelines, tone and escalation

Most clients go live within several days of signing. During onboarding, we build your moderation guidelines with you, so our moderators make the decision you would make. The following is a complete list of onboarding activities, which can be scaled up or down based on your needs:

A lead moderator on a video call with a new client team during a discovery call

Day 1
Discovery call
Your project manager and lead moderator meet your team. We cover your channels, audience, typical volume, peak times, and the outcomes you care about. Together we agree on your goals and how to measure success. You decide which services and channels are in scope.
Days 1–2
Channel and tool access
You give us access to the platforms and tools you already use, such as Sprout Social or Brandwatch, or the native platforms. We work inside your setup rather than asking you to change it.
Days 2–4
Guideline creation
We draft a moderation guideline document from your community rules, brand voice and past problem cases. It defines what to approve, hide, delete, reply to and escalate, with real examples from your channels. For some clients, we build a response library together, to ensure brand voice and consistency.
Day 5
Escalation paths agreed
We map who gets contacted for what, how fast, and through which channel: email, Slack, phone or text. This becomes your escalation matrix (see below).
Days 5–7
Moderator training and shadow shifts
The moderators assigned to your account study your guidelines and work supervised shifts, with the lead moderator reviewing their decisions.
Day 7
Go live
Full coverage starts on the schedule you chose.
Week 4
First review
We review the first month together: volumes, edge cases, escalations, and any guideline changes. Guidelines are a living document and are updated as your community changes.

What happens in a typical moderator's day

A moderator looks at every item that lands on your social channels, checks it against your guidelines, and works within your agreed response time. Here is what a typical moderator's shift looks like:

A moderator wearing headphones reviewing comments on a laptop

Shift handover. The incoming moderator reads the outgoing shift's notes: open threads, ongoing issues, anything the client flagged that day.
Review. Moderators work through new comments, replies, direct messages, posts, photos, video and reviews as they arrive, in your tools or natively on each platform. They also scan proactively, watching earned channels such as third-party posts, threads and mentions of your brand outside your own accounts, if that is in scope.
Act. Moderators take action based on your guidelines: approve, hide, delete, reply, or ban where your rules allow it. Replies go out in your brand voice, using the approved response library or your approval workflow.
Escalate. Anything outside the guidelines, or anything that needs a decision only you can make, goes up the escalation path. Urgent issues reach you by phone or text, if you so choose.
Log and report. Moderators log notable items and trends as they go. At the end of the shift, they write the handover and the shift report.

Our escalation matrix

Moderators handle routine items themselves and escalate the rest by severity. Each client's matrix is built during onboarding; this sample shows the structure most clients start from.

Tier	Example situations	What the moderator does	Who is contacted
1. Routine	Spam, off-topic posts, mild profanity, common product questions	Acts on the guideline: hides, deletes or replies from the response library	No one. Logged in the shift report
2. Needs input	Complaints outside the response library, refund or policy questions, press or influencer contact	Holds or acknowledges, then asks the client for a decision	Your named day-to-day contact, by email or Slack
3. Urgent	A post going viral, a coordinated pile-on, a credible legal or safety complaint, a data or privacy issue	Removes or hides where the guideline allows, documents everything, alerts the lead moderator	Your escalation contact and your lead moderator, by phone or text
4. Critical	Threats of violence or self-harm, child safety concerns, illegal content	Preserves evidence, removes content, reports to the platform, follows the agreed emergency protocol	Your emergency contact by phone, any hour, plus platform reporting channels

You choose the contacts, channels and response time.

How we train moderators

Our moderators bring a wealth of experience to our clients and they've chosen to remain with us for 8 years on average. This means the person reviewing your comments has likely encountered almost every kind of social media or community challenge.

A lead moderator and a moderator reviewing moderation decisions together on a laptop

Training

New moderators complete training before working on any client account. It covers platform policies, brand voice, de-escalation, privacy, and how to recognize content that must be escalated. Before joining your account, each moderator studies your guidelines and works supervised shadow shifts with the lead moderator.

Quality

Lead moderators periodically review a sample of decisions on every account and give feedback directly to the moderators. This process quickly surfaces any recurring questions, which can become guideline updates. Consequently, every moderator handles the same situation in the same way, ensuring your community remains predictable and your brand voice stays steady.

Why tenure matters

Low turnover is the biggest difference between a dedicated moderation partner and a revolving staffing pool. Your account keeps the same core moderators month after month, year after year, so knowledge of your community, your regulars and your history stays on the team instead of walking out the door.

Account management and reporting

Every plan includes strategy, a defined process, account management and reporting. You always know who is working on your account and what they found.

A lead moderator on the phone with a client, smiling at her desk

Your team

Lead moderator: owns the guidelines, trains and reviews the moderators on your account, and is the first point of contact for day-to-day questions.
Moderators: a consistent core team assigned to your account, with trained backups for holidays and peaks.

We work with you as one team. We will suggest changes when we see patterns, but you decide which services and channels we cover.

Your reports

Reporting ranges from monthly summaries to hourly shift reports, depending on what your team needs. Typical reports include:

Volume handled, by channel and by action taken
Escalations raised, and how each was resolved
Response times against your targets
Recurring themes: product issues, common questions, sentiment shifts
Recommended guideline or process changes

The moderators read every comment, so reports often surface product feedback and early warnings your marketing and support teams can use.

Scaling up and down

Coverage is built around when your community is active. We set the monitoring cadence with you, balancing your goals against your budget. Most clients start on one of four coverage models:

Weekend coverage: for brands whose in-house team handles weekdays.
Weekdays, Monday to Friday: business-hours coverage in your time zone.
Nights and weekends: we cover every hour your team is offline.
High volume and 24/7/365: round-the-clock coverage for busy or high-risk communities.

See what each coverage model costs.

Launches, live events and crises

When you know a spike is coming, such as a product launch, a live broadcast or a campaign, tell us ahead of time and we add trained moderators to assist. For unplanned spikes, the lead moderator can add cover at short notice. When the busy period ends, coverage goes back to your normal plan.

Why human-led, and where we do use automation

We choose human moderation because the hardest decisions depend on context. Sarcasm, in-jokes, coded language, a customer who is upset for a good reason, filters simply read words, while people understand meaning.

That does not mean we avoid technology. We work inside the platforms and tools you already use, including their built-in filters, keyword rules and queue management that you have already configured. Automation helps sort and prioritize the queue, but a trained moderator makes the decision and crafts the reply.

Automation

Automation handles:

spam filtering, keyword flags, routing and prioritizing items in the queue.

People

People handle:

every decision to approve, remove or reply; anything ambiguous; anything that speaks in your brand's name; every escalation.

For a deeper look, read Human vs. AI Content Moderation: Where Each One Wins.

How content moderation works: FAQs

How does outsourced content moderation work?

You give a moderation partner access to your channels and agree guidelines together. Trained moderators then review incoming content, act on it according to those guidelines, escalate what needs your decision, and report back to you on a set schedule.

How long does onboarding take?

Most clients go live within several business days. That covers the discovery call, guidelines, tone and response library, escalation paths and moderator training.

Who writes the moderation guidelines?

We draft them with you, from your community rules, brand voice and past examples. You approve them, and they are updated as new situations come up.

What happens when something serious is posted?

It follows your escalation matrix. Urgent and critical issues reach a named contact by phone or text within minutes, at any hour, with a backup contact if the first cannot be reached.

Do your moderators use our tools?

Yes. We work inside the tools you already use, such as Sprout Social or Brandwatch, or natively on each platform.

How do you report on our community?

Reports range from monthly summaries to hourly shift reports. They cover volume, actions, escalations, response times and recurring themes.

Talk to us about your community

Tell us about your channels, your volume and the hours you need covered. A moderation specialist will walk you through how onboarding would work for you.

Talk to a moderation specialist See pricing