How To Respond To Negative Social Media Comments

Social media offers many benefits to companies in terms of marketing and connecting with customers. But alongside this, it does carry the downside that occasionally you are going to come up against some unhappy customers who aren’t shy about sharing their views with all your other followers. When this happens – and at some point it will – it’s a good idea to be prepared.

Learn some tactics for responding to negative social media comments, such as:

Work Quickly: If someone feels they have a genuine grievance against you, then the longer they have to wait for your response to their post, the more annoyed they will get. Also, because these are public forums it means that every minute you waste is a minute that the story can be spread around other users or exaggerated. Respond calmly, telling them you are aware of their complaint and are looking into it right away. Often the biggest frustration for people is not being able to get hold of someone to talk about their issues. If they know they have your attention they are likely to calm down and be willing to work out a solution.

Be Human: Offer your name and give a sympathetic, warm response rather than a generic, corporate reply. You will find that this can go a long way towards softening people. It is far easier to deal with upset customers if you talk to them like human beings and really listen to their grievance.

Make It Right: If the mistake is on your side then you need to make a genuine apology to the customer. The next thing to do is to find a solution they will be happy with. If it is a case of a faulty product, for example, most people will usually be content to accept a replacement or refund. If they feel they have received a poor service or a member of your staff has been rude, an apology, voucher for credit or something similar will help to show that you are taking the matter seriously.

Don’t Get Into Arguments: Even if the allegation against you is unreasonable or completely false, as a company you should always be above getting into a social media slanging match. Remember that absolutely anyone can see this and it will make you look very unprofessional. If someone is being rude, aggressive or complaining just for the sake of it, you should simply give a single, calm response stating your position and then ignore them. They will normally get bored very quickly.

Keep It Open: If you are working to fix a mistake your company has made, you may be tempted to ask the customer to take the conversation offline and email you privately. This is a mistake: it’s actually better to keep things in the open as it shows you have nothing to hide and other potential customers can see that in such cases you do your best to fix the problem. It can actually work to your benefit by giving other people confidence to buy from you, knowing that if there is a problem you can be contacted.

Twitter Followers: Why You Should Never Fake Them

If you’ve ever been struck by the huge amounts of Twitter followers some of your competitors seem to have, it’s worth pausing for a while before you boil over with jealousy. You may be thinking that your tweets and the information you share are far more valuable, so why is it that internet users are flocking to them in such great numbers? The answer may well be that many of these followers are in fact fake.

But how do these companies even get their ‘fake followers’ to begin with? One way, believe it or not, is to simply purchase them. In this way you can suddenly acquire 1000 Twitter followers in one sweep. By contrast, a company doing things the normal way might perhaps hope to get about 20 new followers each day if they are really putting a lot of effort into their social media marketing.

On the other hand, it’s also possible to acquire fake followers by accident. In fact, around 5 per cent of total followers will be from fake accounts that make it a point to follow other users in order to appear real. If you don’t want to get involved with fake followers then be on your guard and don’t follow anyone back if they seem suspicious.

But are you still tempted to fake some followers because it seems like an easy option? A lot less work? Well think again, because this kind of practice can destroy your online credibility. It can be quite obvious if you have a large number of fake followers and if you’re trying to make your mark in a B2B environment, where trust and reputation are key, you will do your credibility a lot of damage. People will simply avoid you.

Also, bear in mind that if the majority of your followers are fake then this is just a meaningless number at the end of the day: you will not be able to engage with them and this means you won’t be using your Twitter account to boost your brand. After all, social media is all about engaging in conversations, sharing content and ideas. If all you’re doing is garnering a lot of followers who won’t respond to you, it not only makes you look bad but it is also a waste of a valuable marketing opportunity.

As a last point, fake followers are actually contrary to Twitter’s terms of service which means that if you are employing this tactic regularly then your account can simply be suspended or deleted. Once it becomes known that this has happened to you it will take you a long time to build up respect within the online business community again – if indeed you are able to at all. Taking all this into account, it really is best to hone your social marketing skills and do things the honest way. Yes, you may have fewer followers to begin with but they will all be relevant to you and hopefully willing to engage with your tweets.