There is nothing new about negative reviews from customers. However, modern social media platforms have amplified the negativity to a great extent as more and more people are able to create fake profiles and leave negative comments on the internet.
Generally, platforms like Twitter and Yelp are used to badly review a business or an institute to destroy its reputation. Even on a personal level, negative social media comments can have devastating consequences.
Read on to learn more about the top effective strategies you should use to respond to negative social media comments.
Strategy # 01 – Respond to Negative Comments Quickly
You should never leave negative comments unanswered on your profile and social media posts for a long time because more people will read them. It will impact your business negatively. You should reply to a negative comment as soon as possible so that other potential customers can also see that you are interested in taking feedback and solving the client's issues.
Strategy # 02 – Apologize, if necessary.
One of the most effective ways of pacifying angry clients is by apologizing to them when they are complaining about your products or services. Using the ‘customer is always right’ strategy is important for companies to ensure maximum customer satisfaction.
Moreover, if you apologize to your dissatisfied clients, it will impress other potential customers. Even if you are dealing with a very small issue, it is highly likely that the other users will notice it and ignore the negative review.
Strategy # 03 – Discuss the Issue
First of all, you will have to react to a negative social media comment publicly. Your second step should be to discuss the issue in detail with the user who has left a negative comment. The private discussion will make it easier for you to communicate with the customer and understand the exact problem to try to resolve it.
Strategy # 04 – Focus on Constructive Criticism
While it is possible that you might get a lot of negative and mean comments on social media, it is still vital to focus on constructive criticism and appreciate the feedback to continually improve your business.
Once you have responded to a negative comment, you should let them know that you will work on their feedback to improve your products or services. Suggestions from the clients are important in keeping a business relevant and up-to-date as per their needs.
Strategy # 05 – Keep Some Negative Comments
You should never make the mistake of deleting all negative comments from your social media profiles. Nowadays, users are quite smart enough to recognize the fact that a business or social media profile manager is moderating the comments and deleting all negative comments. It will adversely impact your business even more.
Delete the negative comments only in situations when someone is using offensive language or posting illogical comments. Otherwise, you should always respond to genuine complaints and negative comments that are specific to your products and services.
Strategy # 06 – Be Smart in your Responses
Since social media is full of all types of users, it is highly possible that some people might be posting negative comments only to gain some attention and create controversy. You should not fall into this trap and be smart in your responses. It is not necessary to respond to every other negative comment.
Types of Negative Comments
There are different types of negative comments on social media. It is important to distinguish between them so that you can respond accordingly:
1. Complaints
Most companies and businesses receive customer complaints on social media platforms. Generally, most of such complaints are genuine, so you should definitely respond to them and try to sort out the issue.
2. Trolls
Unfortunately, trolling has become common on both personal and professional accounts. It is much more rampant on Facebook and Twitter. The main goal of the trolls is to cause issues for a business and gain personal attention. They are not genuine customers, so you should avoid engaging with them and ignore their negative comments.
3. Offensive and Malicious Comments
Comments that contain offensive or malicious language fall into these categories. They are much meaner than trolls' comments. Such comments typically attack the brand or personality of the team behind an organization. Their primary goal is to cause emotional harm.
You can deal with such comments by establishing clear and easy-to-understand rules and regulations related to social media engagement. For instance, you should make it clear that you have a no profanity rule, so you will be deleting all offensive comments.
Improve Your Online Reputation
It is understandable that whenever you see a negative comment, your first instinct is to make a sarcastic comment in return. However, you should remember that responding to the trolls is not worth it most of the time. You should follow the tips and tricks discussed in this article to deal with the negative comments on social media smartly.