If you took a survey of senior marketing executives and ask them what concerns them most about social media marketing the number one answer will be the inability to control what people write about a brand online.
It takes a big leap of faith to let go and let others control or define the marketing message. Advertising Age (Paid) had an interesting article on this recently and one of the points they brought up was what better way to engage people in your message and the language surrounding your brand than to engage them in a dialogue about it?
Opportunities exist to reach out and interact with those who have only negative things to say about your brand. Adage believes that reaching out to this audience can have powerful positive consequences. They frame it this way:
Reaching out conveys confidence, accessibility, respect and authenticity to people both inside and outside the brand community.
Even if you cannot always control the conversation, you can always join in the conversation. That lets you project an image of authenticity and transparency and helps build up your brand value.
What do you do when there are negative comments written about you or your brand? Do you ignore them and hope that they go away, or do you meet them head on and try and engage in a conversation?
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Definitely meet them head on and try and deal with the situation. I think I’ll answer this in the form of a blog post!
I look forward to reading it Glen.
I guess before social media, corporations only had the facade of control over their brand because conversations about their brands have always been going on in the conversations in people’s homes, workplaces, etc. I realize that the web brings it to a new level, but conducting business is always better when done without fear so the businesses who embrace this will do better than those who try to hold on and continue to control things.
This is so true. In practice it is often difficult to separate ourselves from these comments, or at least it is for me sometimes. If we follow this advice – then perhaps a negative can be turned positive.
I just recently was involved in some rather negative “to and fro” between myself and some of our colleagues. It is unfortunate when contemporaries argue back and forth over nothing. Thanks for reminding us all how we should play the game.
Always, Phil
Sphunn here: http://sphinn.com/story/24845
Meeting head on with such discussions is actually a positive way to tackle and protect your brand. In any case you cannot prevent people from reading such comments and that definitely is going to destroy your reputation. The best thing that could be done in such a case is to embrace it as a challenge and get involved. If you are able to properly handle it, the aftereffects of such negative comments shall only be positive. Not responding to / ignoring such comments is just like accepting them.
sometimes it is hard to separate the “professional” you from the “personal” feelings you get when you receive a bad feedback but when you engage in social media sites, well, it’s bound to happen so better to deal with it as soon as you calm down. put yourself together, assess the damage and do the best you can to salvage your dignity.