Negative Attacks Can Be Good For You
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.
[audio:http://www.ageofengage.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/Podtech_Marketing_Voices__Interview_wi.mp3]
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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denise(at)ageofengage.com
denise.shiffman
deniseshiffman
@denisess
April 30th, 2008 at 1:29 pm
Interesting topic would love to hear more on this.
May 1st, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Great point Denise. What I love about social media is that publicized cloud can have a publicized silver lining. While the stakes are high to ignore negative posts and comments on a blog, video, tweet, forum, picture etc… the opportunity to listen, understand and engage can provide equally rewarding results. All one has to do is look at the Dell example and how they’ve literally become the case study for listening online in a very short time.
David Alston
Radian6
social media monitoring
June 2nd, 2008 at 11:52 am
Denise, great points. Having worked in healthcare marketing for over 25 years, we always live in fear of someone saying something bad…when actually, I have found that when anyone takes the time to engage, and give you their thoughts and impressions, valuable insight is gained. I encourage my client hospitals to start accepting blog input about service line specific experiences. There is much to do in healthcare to begin to create positive experiences for our patients, and when the community engages, the clients are more likely to listen.
Thanks for the messages.
Candace Quinn
Brand=Experience