Critical Comments on Social Media: How Companies Should Handle Them!
Learn how your company can best deal with positive, neutral, critical, and trolling comments on social media and protect your image.
Social media is an important part of marketing and communication for businesses nowadays. However, critical comments on social media can quickly lead to damage to a company’s image. With this article, we want to help you better handle critical comments and protect your image.
Crisis Management on Social Media
Social media is a place where people share their opinions and thoughts. However, when these opinions are critical, they can quickly become a problem for companies. Negative comments can affect a company’s image and reputation, and reduce customer loyalty. That’s why it’s important for companies to know how to handle critical comments.
A functioning infrastructure is particularly helpful. Who responds when and where, who is responsible, how monitoring works, and so on. At E&Z, we have over 20 years of successful crisis management experience and are happy to support you!
Crisis Traffic Light Green: Users with Positive Comments
Positive feedback on social media is great for any business. It shows that customers are satisfied and the brand is perceived well. One way to respond to positive comments is to thank users and send them an offer or discount code to reward their loyalty.
Responding appreciatively to positive comments and occasionally offering a small thank you (like a discount code) encourages other customers to post similar comments.
Crisis Traffic Light Yellow: No Crisis Risk
Neutral comments can indicate that users are not yet familiar with the company or are not particularly satisfied with what it offers. It is important to treat these users kindly and provide them with all the necessary information to convince them of the company’s quality.
Differentiate between factual and emotional comments. Often, commentators are not looking for information but validation. They want to feel seen and taken seriously as customers.
In contrast to the red crisis traffic light, even if yellow comments have critical tendencies or express dissatisfaction, there is no risk of reputational damage.
Crisis Traffic Light Red: Risk of Reputation Damage
Critical comments are a challenge for any company. It is important to respond to these comments quickly and professionally. Before responding, carefully read and understand the statements. Then, address the user’s concerns and offer a solution or compromise. This way, you can regain the user’s trust and improve the company’s image.
Not every critical comment poses a crisis risk. Often, a charming response and professional problem-solving can prevent many issues.
Because even digitally, we are talking to people. People want to be heard, seen, and taken seriously.
If there is a serious mistake by the company and reputational damage is imminent, the person must be contacted as soon as possible. The conversation and problem-solving should not happen in the comment section on Facebook but over the phone or in private messages/emails.
Also important: Do not admit guilt or justify yourself at this point. The allegations must be quickly reviewed internally. The crisis infrastructure must already be running smoothly at this point.
We therefore strongly recommend that every company conducts regular crisis simulations. Contact us, we’re happy to help!
Crisis Traffic Light Eye Roll: Trolling Users
Trolling users often have no serious intentions and are just looking for a reaction. The best approach is not to respond to them and block or report them. It is important to keep the discussion factual and focus on the serious comments.
We recommend: Hide the comments early on or use the ban hammer. Arguing with someone who just wants to provoke leads nowhere. An internet wisdom as old as the internet itself: Don’t feed the troll, or it will get stronger.
Conclusion
Critical comments on social media can be a problem for companies, but they also provide an opportunity to gain customer trust and improve the image. By responding quickly and professionally to all comments, customer loyalty can be increased, and the company can be presented positively. As a partner of an experienced agency like Engel & Zimmermann, companies can be confident that they can respond professionally and effectively to any type of comment.
Contact us for a non-binding initial consultation with our experts!