“If you don’t have any haters, you’re not pushing the boundaries” – Neil Patel
If you have done any amount of marketing on social media, you already know that negative feedback is an unavoidable risk you have to take every time you engage with customers on a public platform. Customers are just people after all, who’re sometimes moody, angry, impatient or just plain ignorant – and it is your burden as a business marketer to stick a smiley face on it and go on being nice to them.
But what happens when negative comments on social media get out of hand? What can brand-owners do if a reputation-destroying feedback on their Facebook page somehow snowballs into a public lynching exercise? Look on helplessly and pray that this too shall pass? Fight back? Delete the post?
None of these immediate options will do your brand image much good.
In order to regain lost grounds and minimize the impact of negative comments on social media, you have to plan in advance and have appropriate damage control tactics in place before such an attack can even take place. And if you haven’t done that already, here are 8 very effective tips that will help you protect and save your brand image when you’re the unlucky punching bag in the next social bash-up:
# 1: Leave The Trollers Alone
• Unless the matter is directly related to your product or service, never engage with trollers. They’re the energy vampires of the social media world, and you feed the fires in their belly when you try to talk reasonably with them on a public platform. Just leave their inflammatory comments alone and move on. From time to time you will respond, but with pure kindness. As the saying goes, “Turn the other cheek.” Kindness usually makes them quieten down, or at the very least, makes them look unreliable because they reply in hate.
# 2: Respond Speedily To Others
• Waiting customers aren’t often happy customers. But when you leave angry customers to stew about their complaints while they wait impatiently for your slow-and-lazy response, they get very, very angry.
Stop mounting frustrations from erupting all over your social media pages, and intervene as soon as possible with a listening ear or a quick solution. When customers see you working hard – and working quickly — to win back their favor, they’re more agreeable to come off the ledge.
# 3: Respond Publicly Before You Go Private
• It’s understandable that you want to take unhappy customers off your social media page as quickly as possible, to discuss their issues in private. But once a negative comment has already appeared on a public platform, it is too late to hush the matter up. Remember that other potential/existing customers have also seen it, and you have to defend your turf on that same space, establishing your transparency and integrity for everybody to see, before you privately contact the person to resolve the matter.
# 4: Say It With Gifts
• Freebies, gift cards and coupons have an instantly cooling effect on bad tempers, so make liberal use of them to neutralize an imminent threat of social name-calling and brand-busting slander.
# 5: Personalize Responses
• It doesn’t matter if the customer isn’t always right. Not if you’re looking to stay in business for the long-term. So defend your actions, policies and decisions if you can, without belittling the customer, and for heaven’s sake be real in your apology. Don’t copy-paste standard we’re-sorry texts into the communication box because this is not the time to take shortcuts with your customer service.
# 6: Monitor The `Unbranded’ Social Chatter
• You’ll miss out on a lot of social conversations about your products and services if you’re only looking for mentions of your handles and hashtags. People are probably talking about you, even if they’re not bothering to use @s and #s to loop you into the conversation. Here’s a piece of statistics for you: As much as 91% of customers who discuss brands online do NOT follows those brands’ social media pages.
# 7: DON’T Delete The Negative Comments
• Unless it is morally wrong in any way, don’t delete unsavory feedback about your brand from social media pages to keep your reputation looking clean. There’s a high chance that you will incite more hostility and derogatory comments if you do that, and give the impression that you definitely have something to hide.
# 8: Stop Worrying About The Repercussions
• It is impossible not to have some haters on social media. It is a sign that you’re innovating and growing, and some people would love to cut you down to size. The smart thing to do is take it on the chin and carry on.
It isn’t the negative comments on social media that you should waste your time worrying about anyway. It’s how you mobilize your marketing team to handle the crises that will ultimately reflect on the integrity of your brand and make customers feel they are being well looked after by your people.
Good luck!
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