When many companies are looking at climbing on the social media bandwagon, one of first questions they tend to ask is: “What if someone says something bad or negative about us?”. More than the cost, time and resources need to move into social media, this issue is the biggest obstacle that many companies have to overcome.

The blunt reality is negative or bad comments, tweets, updates and conversations about a brand, product or service are part of the social media landscape. They are part of being involved in a game in which consumers have the power and ability to talk to you as much as you can talk to them.

So should the prospect of negative/bad comments keep a company on the sidelines? The short answer is: “No”.

Think of it this way, people are going to say negative/bad things about your brand, products and services regardless of whether your company has a social media presence or not. As a result, it just makes sense to be involved with social media you can be part of the action as opposed to standing in street clothes on the sidelines.

The key to negative/bad comments and conversations is having plan on how handle them. This plan should include details on how to assess negative/bad conversations, and a ranking system to determine whether it’s just someone venting or a legitimate concern or problems that should be quickly addressed and, hopefully, resolved.

The plan should also include who will be doing the responding, as well as a series of scenarios with the appropriate responses. This provide a framework to get engaged quickly given the real-time nature of social media and the expectation among people for quick responses.

The bottom line is while no one likes to be criticized, it happens so the best approach is being prepared for whatever comes along as opposed to not being involved at all.

Tags: guidelines, policies, Social Media

This entry was posted on Monday, January 18th, 2010 at 10:55 am and is filed under Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.