Web Design in Oklahoma City

A while back, Justin Boeckman published an article on our blog entitled "Online reputation management" in which he identified ways to use the internet to help the reputation of your business or organization. In the post, he identified two broad categories of online reputation management:

1. Macro online reputation management: the business of getting information out when something goes wrong, and
2. Micro online reputation management: the business of monitoring and responding to what individuals are saying about you online.

In this post, I'd like to continue the discussion about micro online reputation management and talk about they ways you should and should not go about responding to things that you discover other people are saying about your business, especially negative things. Justin's post covered the details of finding what people are saying, so to review that information, please visit his original post and look for the section discussing the micro.

What you should not do

It's always hard when you discover somebody saying something negative about your business. It can often feel like a personal attack, especially for those of us who are very passionate about our work and our products. Don't let that feeling cause you to make a quick reaction that you'll later regret. Take a deep breath, think about it, and be sure you don't do the following:

1. Don't lash out. It's never a good idea to lash out, whether that's in person, on the phone, over email, or on the internet, so don't do it. It only makes things worse.
2. Don't pose as someone else. Posing as someone that's not from your business and engaging the person who left the comment publicly is inauthentic and kind of silly. Sure, you may get away with it, but you're taking a risk that you won't and you're likely going to come of biased anyway. If you can't say it with your own name and title attached, you probably shouldn't be saying it at all.
3. Don't retaliate. Don't create your own blog post or content designed to get back at the person or group with the negative comments. That will naturally just look very defensive and give credence to the negative comments you are trying to correct.
4. Don't address it publicly. Even if you sign your name to it, I still don't recommend leaving public comments or engaging negative comments publicly in most cases. When you start trying to justify or argue a point as a representative of your business, even if you're doing it politely, you look a little like a bully trying to throw your weight around. This most likely isn't the way to go.

What you should do

Plain and simple — go to the source. Find a way to privately get in contact with the person who expressed the negative sentiment for the purpose of trying to resolve any issue they have. Don't ask them to retract what they said or post a follow up. Don't even be concerned about the comments they've posted. Instead, just tell them that you noticed they have had a bad experience and you want to do whatever you can to resolve it. Then, work it out to the best of your ability.

Control the experience, not the conversation

You can't control what people say about you, but you can try to make their experience better and if you do, the conversation will likely reflect the experience. The bottom line is to avoid going after the negative comments and instead go after the source of the problem, and that is best handled privately and with all of the tact and customer service that makes your company as great as it is.