In this era of digitalism, every business uses the platform of social media for quick marketing and better customer service. Videos on YouTube, posts on Facebook and promotional photos on Instagram can trigger increased profits in no time. The reason behind the inclination of digital marketing is lower input cost and higher productivity that can take any business to the heights of success. But social media can also become the cause of your business downfall!
As social media gives freedom of opinion to everybody you never know when an angry customer may come up with a negative comment on your brand. Comments full of hatred and disappointment can ruin the prestige and reputation of your business hence it’s much important to manage negativity on social media. Responding to such comments is neither a fun task nor easy to do but you cannot let it go unhandled as they directly target your company’s products and services.
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To manage negative comments on social media, first, you need to understand the nature of the comment. Whether it’s based on a bad experience, poor service quality or some kind of misunderstanding. Determining the type of negative comments will help you to deal with them in a more appropriate manner. You always have the options of deleting a comment and blocking the user but that’s not a right way to deal with negativity.
Here are some ways of managing negative comments on social media with a professional attitude:
Categorize the comment
There are different categories in which negative comments can be classified to decide how you can respond to diffuse negativity. The categories are:
- Company’s error: comments against the services and products of your company include in this category. Such comments are written by customers who do not find your ways of doing business satisfying.
- Misunderstanding or confusion: this type involves comments that are based on misunderstandings or some kind of confusions. There is a possibility that customers experience different outcomes than expected. Usually, when people don’t enquire much before using the services or listen to some third person, they end up writing negative comments.
- Just negative: Some people only spread negativity and complain just for the sake of complaining regardless of any genuine reason. They make up their mind and judge everybody according to it.
- Spam/fake: every negative comment is not written by a genuine customer. To enjoy a competitive advantage, your opponents may use spam comments to hurt your prestige and decrease your reputation. These comments are usually found in blogs rather than social media networks.
Categorizing will let you decide which commenter deserves your explanation and an apology and which one must be blocked.
Keep a copy of negative comment
To manage negative comments on social media, you will need to document everything that happens online. Take screenshots of negative comments because it’s possible that commenters might delete or decide to edit them. This documentation of offending comments will help you to respond such comments in future immediately without wasting any time.
Don’t delete unless necessary!
When it comes to managing social media negativity, you cannot just brush off everything you dislike. Deleting negative comments will make you appear as a loser who cannot respond genuinely but only hides the dirt under the rug. You must consider the complaining comments and show some professionalism by responding to them. But, if the comment is projecting unethical language, you can delete it to maintain your moral standards.
Stay cool!
You know what’s the best part about social media? You get a chance to think before responding to an offensive comment. Stay cool and look for all possible responses to choose the best one. The commenter is not answerable to anybody but your one wrong response can drive away many customers. Never take any negative comment personally and remember, being humble and apologetic will not cause you any harm but only portray a positive image of your brand.
Be active to respond immediately
Make sure you stay active on social media because it’s a time-sensitive platform where people expect to be responded immediately. And when it comes to negative comment, quick response is essential otherwise you might give an impression of being guilty. Keep the social media notifications on to not miss out on any recent update or comment.
Initially, keep it public!
To deal with a negative comment, you should opt to respond publicly instead of sending a private message or email. Keeping it public will portray your better image and also clarify the customers with the same problem who didn’t choose to comment.
Time to get private
Some comments are quite nasty and completely disgraceful that it seems your response might make the situation worst. In such scenarios, you can respond with a comment requesting for complaint through email, message or phone so you may understand customer’s problem in a better way to resolve it. It’s better to get private when you see more negativity coming because it might become difficult to handle publicly.
Be responsive, not defensive!
One thing you must understand to manage negativity on social media is that defensive attitude will only damage your reputation instead of improving it. Errors can be made by anyone but success only welcomes the ones who learn from their mistakes. It’s possible that a negative comment is legitimate and written by someone who is trying to tell you about flaws in your business. Consider what is being said and if it’s your mistake, accept it and respond responsibly instead of denying the truth blindly.
Don’t be fake!
Whether your response is an apology or an explanation, be real and original! Never choose sarcastic attitude to respond or some kind of fake apology because it will affect your image pretty badly.
Compensate for your faults
If a negative comment is truly legitimate, it’s your responsibility to offer some incentive or compensation to make things right. There are many options of doing it such as pay their money back, replace the product without any surcharges and offer free service. It will not only resolve the negativity but also bring customer satisfaction.
Author bio:This article has been written by Elena Gray. She lives in Chicago and works as a full-time digital marketer. She is also a pro blogger who writes for HR assignment Help.
