If social media has done anything it has given a voice to people who want to complain, argue, rant, and attack your company or you personally. CEOs are grappling with the choice of ignoring this behavior or inviting it onto their home page. Bloggers, authors, radio hosts, and others are often surprised by the personal vitriol directed towards them. Most everyone is concerned whether or not a single negative voice can ruin their reputation.

I chatted with Jennifer Jones at Marketing Voices on this subject last week and you can listen in.

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The reality of the live Web is that negative commentary and attacks that used to occur offline are now online. That’s actually a good thing. Companies and individuals can understand better what customers actually think. Many companies are finding out about product issues they didn’t previously know about. It’s better to invite this conversation than ignore it.

It’s also important to draw a line between what is acceptable negative commentary and what is slanderous, libelous, or threatening behavior. Most personal attacks by a single commenter go unnoticed and rarely appear high up in search results. They can be ignored. Not everyone is going to like you or agree with you.

Focus on your message and ideas, and make sure you get your message out and optimized to appear in search results. You want people to find the positive. You also want to know what people are saying about you or your products so make sure you’re monitoring the conversation. You can use Attensity, Nielson BuzzMetrics, Andiamo Systems, or free Google Alerts to do that.

Andy Beal at Marketing Pilgrim has co-written a new book on the subject of managing your image online titled Radically Transparent (love the title). This is a subject every marketing professional should be well-versed in.

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Paul Lewis and the folks at MindComet are doing amazing things in new media. Paul recently interviewed me on his Internet Marketing Voodoo podcast.

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If you have very little experience in website design or SEO and want the basics, I can’t think of a better way to learn than from The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper) whose videos on YouTube are not only entertaining they’re informative.

[youtube]http://youtube.com/watch?v=a0qMe7Z3EYg[/youtube]

Thanks to MarketingProfs for the pointer.

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eBay’s CEO John Donahoe on the negative response from the community regarding the changes he’s making at eBay:

For example, in February sellers who viewed a recent change to eBay’s payment structure as a fee increase organized an attention-grabbing boycott of the site. In an interview after the quarterly earnings report on Wednesday, Mr. Donahoe, who officially succeeded Meg Whitman in March, said he was not fazed by the attention. “The good news is Meg prepared me well for this,” he said. “I will say at one point in the first quarter I got an e-mail from my mother that said, ‘John, eBay sellers may not love you, but your mother does.’ ” (more)

The quote gave me a chuckle and reminded me that we’re all human after all. And most of the time, the community calms down and accepts change.

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I get a comment or question on a daily basis about the amount of time social media requires. I find it difficult myself to write regular blog posts, twitter, keep up on Facebook, read the 100 or so blogs I’m fed, and write free ebooks on top of my day job.

ReadWriteWeb has an interesting post that tries to answer the question taken from a blogger who focuses specifically on new media for museums.

If you think of blogging, tweeting, and social networking as vehicles to sell product you would be making a mistake. These environments are for branding, influencing, and developing relationships. They are great for market learning. They can, however, take your prospects to other marketing venues where you can convert them.

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