A negative comment on the web can be lethal, especially if your business is being gunned down by influential bloggers or Twitter users. Even with that in mind, we still can’t guarantee that we won’t receive a bad comment. We have to prepare for and learn to deal with its consequences.
Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia surveyed marketers to find out how they handle negative buzz. Unsurprisingly, engaging directly with the publishers is the method that marketers use most often (47 %).
Other methods include:
The Best Method?
A popular method might not be the best method for you.
There isn’t any hard and fast rule towards tackling a social media disaster. It depends on the situation, the audience and the background of the publisher (e.g. Satire blog generally requires proper attention).
Think about the McDonald’s red worm example that we blogged about (titled How To: Manage A Social Media Disaster) sometime ago: the more McDonald’s tried to address the problem, the more the problem aggravated. Ignoring such nonsensical claims and focusing on other positive associations was most likely the best thing to do at that time.
