Ink Foundry - Social Media Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing

Approximate Reading Time: 2 minutes

1. Listen
   • Listening to conversations about your brand can help you identify issues before they get out of control
   • Listening to what is being said about your company, your competitors and your category can put the complaint in context and so you can respond appropriately.
   • Identifying the key members of the social network will also allow you to understand the general tone of the community to better respond to a negative social media post.
2. Be Visible In Your Community
   • If you’ve been participating in conversations and a bad review comes in, it’s much more likely that as a valued member of the social community, your response to the negativity will carry enough weight to stop it from spreading. The goal is to have an ongoing relationship with the community members.
   • Frequently, brands will ask us to fix a problem that has been gathering steam on social media channels, yet they have zero visibility in that particular social network. Jumping in at this point, unless done with extreme dexterity, can look defensive and generate additional negativity.

3. Don’t Be Afraid To Ask For Help
   • If there is a negative review on a social media channel that you’re not comfortable responding to or just need to run your response by someone for help, do it before hitting the send button.
4. Be Prepared
   • Consider likely scenarios for your particular business and how you would respond to them in advance.
   • Preparation can help you respond quickly and control emotive issues.
5. Gather All The Facts
   • Before responding, make sure you gather all of the necessary information first. If it turns out you don’t have the information, this can cause you to lose credibility.
6. Respond Quickly
   • Every online community has its own action-packed timeline, so make sure you respond as quickly as possible.
   • Anecdotally, one bad review seems to encourage others to do the same.
7. Move The Conversation Off The Social Network, if necessary
   • Respond publicly so the community can see your brand takes complaints seriously.
   • If that doesn’t resolve the issue, then ask the person to contact you directly via phone or email so you can privately discuss any issues in greater detail.
   • Save the other members of the community from having to sort through the details in a flurry of posts.
8. You Don’t Have To Always Respond
   • Sometimes you just don’t need to go there.
   • Example: There is a restaurant reviewer on Yelp who posts negative reviews about nearly every restaurant he claims to visit. He recently gave one of our social media marketing restaurant clients a bad review. We choose not to respond, but our advocates did. And this is the beauty of social media: your fans frequently come to your aid.
   • It’s challenging not to fire back at someone who is posting negative comments about your beloved brand.
   • You will need to quickly identify if it’s a legitimate complaint or a lone person with issues taking their bad day out on you.
   • Ask yourself, will responding be worth your time and benefit the brand? Make an enemy into a friend? Each situation is different and only you and your social media team know what’s best for your brand.
9. Review Before Sending
   • Although your time is extremely limited, it’s critically important to review what you write before sending it out.

For the complete article: Responding To Negative Social Media Posts

• Posted on Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
• 2 comments