There will be a time when you’ll be faced with having to deal with negative comment online, how you deal with it is important, and it’s not a bad idea to have a plan in place so everyone in your organisation knows what to do.
Firstly you need to be monitoring what’s being said about you online – on various the social media platforms, Twitter, Facebook, and any other websites. Using tools such as like Google Alerts help make the task easier.
It’s important you know how you will deal with any online comment – the good and the bad.
When using social media you’re likely to face lots of comments, either directly about you or your sector – do you want to only respond to those that directly affect you, or will you also respond to the others?
Blogs are another area you’ll need to consider, if you run a blog do you allow comments, do you allow comments to go live without moderation?
If you’re able to delete any comment you don’t like – will you? It’s really important to think before deleting, something I learned from personal experience.
Be honest when responding to any comment, and acknowledge the negative comment people leave, apologise if appropriate – and avoid getting into protracted debates.
Some people find it good to ask people who have given positive comment to share it on other sites – Facebook etc.
You’ll likely be like most others and discover that most of the comments that have some reference to you will be of a complimentary nature, that they’ll be positive, so don’t panic.
Remember too there’s no rule (that I’ve seen) that says you can’t share positive comments – put links to them on your blog, post them on Twitter, Facebook etc.
How are you currently handling negative comment? What would you recommend?
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