Online brand reputation is top of mind for marketers when it comes to social media marketing and brand monitoring. Getting your message across right, the first time, dramatically boosts business success.
There can be no doubt that social media popularity continues to soar, with not let up in sight, so maintaining your social media reputation is vitally important. However, you have to take the good with the bad, and when it comes to social media, there are no scarcity in bad comments, every online business will receive them. So, the most important question is – how can you handle bad comments on your social media posts?
How you respond to negative feedback on your social media posts is just as important as the work and content that goes into creating your social media posts. To learn how to handle bad comments on your posts it will benefit you tremendously to complete a social media course to make sure you don’t slip up and make things worse when you reply to a bad comment.
Voicing their concern
Any digital marketer understands the public’s need to voice their concern, gripe or straight forward anger towards a social media post that has unintentionally ticked them off in some way. However, they also understand that maintaining a healthy online reputation is necessary for their business. As with all positives there is always a flip-side.
Remaining cautious
While some bad comments on your social media posts may be warranted, it’s a good idea to always remain cautious when responding, as there are definitely ‘trolls’ out there on the world wide web and remaining cautious when replying to bad comments can keep you level headed and allows you to respond as constructively as possible.
Bad comments response do’s and don’ts
Just like in the physical world of business and branding there are definite do’s and don’ts when handling bad comments from your customers or potential clients.
Here are a few tips to help you respond to bad comments on your social media posts:
- Take your time – Don’t be hasty when replying to a bad comment. Take the necessary time need to craft your reply carefully, better late than sorry definitely applies here.
- Keep calm – Compose yourself. Don’t react with a knee-jerk reaction or take a bad comment personally. Learn to separate yourself from the negativity.
- Be transparent – No one likes a ‘fake’ response. Be sure to come across as transparent as possible with no hidden agendas except to reply appropriately and helpfully to the bad comment.
- Be objective – Try putting yourself in the complainer’s shoes. Is their complaint or bad comment justified? Pull yourself away from the creator of your social media post and remain objective.
- Be understanding – Be genuinely concerned about the bad comment and above all be understanding. Do not react emotionally and above all else understand what angle the user is coming from.
- Offer solutions – Don’t just respond without a solution. Offering solutions to a user’s bad comment is the best way of diffusing the situation.
The importance of social media posts
Business now considers social media the most important resource for maintaining their online brand reputation. From blogs to reviews to news websites, there is a wide range of platforms where your business can get a bad comment, therefore damage control is necessary. This applies more so when it comes to social media platforms. And the more social media platforms that are available, the more your brand will be open to receiving bad comments.
To delete or not to delete?
The main thing is not to go into a flat spin if your business receives a scathing bad comment on your social media post. Don’t panic. Sometimes the impulse to delete the negative comment kicks in, so how do you decided when to delete or not to delete the bad comment?
In most cases you do not have to resort to such drastic measures as even the worst comments do not need deleting. It’s much better to deal with the negative feedback and so important to show your followers that you ‘do’ indeed deal effectively with bad comments.