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Negative Blog Comments: How to prepare for and handle a bad Consumer Generated Media Thread

What is the best way for a company to handle a bad Consumer Generated Media thread and how can you avoid this from happening in the first place? A senior marketing executive recently asked me this question during a panel discussion at the Frost and Sullivan Sales and Marketing conference in Alexandra, Virgina. The best way to handle a bad consumer generated media thread is to first be prepared to act quickly. If a response is warranted, be transparent, and address the person from a sincerely helpful and curious point of view.

The way I would define a bad Consumer Generated Media thread is one person negatively comments, blogs or forum posts about a company or product and that entry generates a string of follow-on comments within the initial thread that are generally skewed in a negative way against the company. In more severe cases the thread will spread via pickup from outside blogs and ultimately make its way to more traditional forms of media, and social consciousness. Negative threads are inevitable for large companies and are a threat to any company concerned about its public image.

Usually this question comes up after the negative thread has started. What can you do then? The best advice is to evaluate who started the thread, how it started and who’s participating in it now. Is it someone anonymously trolling for a fight or was it an influential blogger trying to be constructive and engaging?

As Mack Collier writes, you can either Ignore them, Antagonize them, Attempt to pacify them, or Address them. I agree with Mack when he says "Address them, This is always the best course of action. You can’t please all your customers all the time, but you CAN listen to them. Let them speak their peace, and see if they are trying to bring to your attention problems in your business processes that can be addressed and corrected." Read carefully what the blogger is saying and ask questions.

Sometimes it is best not to feed the animals. However, I believe that a negative thread handled well can take a potentially negative situation and turn it into something really positive. This is because avid bloggers are the ones who influence the discussions in social media. They tend to appreciate when a company is transparent, listens, asks questions, comes clean in some way or at least shows a little social media savvy in their approach. When a company addresses a blogger’s concern it says to that blogger and to the lurkers in that community something about your company. It says we’re human, we’re listening, we’re concerned because you’re concerned and we’re trying to make things better.

Being prepared for these questions requires research and monitoring of RSS feeds and forums. The way to be prepared is to research the blogosphere and develop a landscape of the blogosphere that matters to your business most. Think about your target audiences and segments. Use social media search tools like Technorati.com and IceRocket.com and blogsearch.google.com that index RSS feeds and profile the important blogging communities, social media networks that attract these audiences and bloggers that influence the discussions around your brand, products or services. Within these communities you will find key influencers and a number of active blogs. Create a dossier of profiles of the individual blogs and their bloggers, and the blogs that they read. A profile could contain what they write about, who reads it, a rating of their relative popularity and influence within a given community. This is research your marketing and communications and PR teams should have anyway. If they do not, it’s a good way to broaden everyone’s sphere of market intelligence and influence.

Start monitoring all your important sites and keywords with a feed reader tool. Adding a feed into a tool is simple. We like Google Reader. A good RSS feed reader will allow you to efficiently scan content for conversations (or threads) that may have a potential impact your business. This research is the foundation for a number of benefits. Here’s an abbreviated list…

• It will prepare you with a starting point for who should be on your radar.

• In a crisis situation this will save you time. Time is the difference between watching helplessly from the sidelines and having an opportunity to steer or influence the discussion in a positive direction.

• Share the information with internal communications. Monitoring and paying attention to social media will give your team and your company a better sense of the community, what they like to talk about, who’s talking, and (most important for later when disaster strikes) how to communicate with them. The value of listening goes beyond marketing and communications. Product developers will be better informed about the customers needs.

• This process will enable you to stay on top of the major discussions so you can be informed about the hot topics. More immortality, it will also improve your sensitivity to potential minefields that are unique to consumer generated media best practices and the particular social media community.

• Part of the question is how to avoid negative threads. Since you are actively monitoring you will often see an opportunity to add value by commenting on a recent blog post or its ensuing thread. Go ahead and make your comment but don’t come off as a huckster by making a smart comment or giving advice then writing something self promotional at the end. Take the Good Samaritan approach. Offer advice and look for nothing in return. Your name and link are usually included with your comment and that’s all you really need. If you can participate and establish some connections with bloggers and communities before the next bomb drops it may give a boost in goodwill points with that community. They will be more receptive to see your side.

• Goodwill from participation will also position you to divert negative threads from happening in the first place.

Maybe your company is considering a social media strategy of its own someday. This process is the logical first step into educating your team in how consumer generated media really works and how to participate in it.

Tags: Consumer Generated Media, crisis communications, how to handle a negative blog comment or post about your company
Filed under: Blogging Strategy, Blogging Tips, New Communications, Product Development

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