How to deal with negative comments on your blog and social media.

You could delete them
You could censor them (delete parts)
You could respond in anger
You could respond in kind

1. Ignore them: The ‘Head in the Sand’ approach. If you don’t reply to the comments, maybe they’ll just go away. If a customer was at your place of business with a complaint, called or emailed your customer service department would you ignore him? No way! So why do some social media managers believe it’s okay to ignore complaints lodged on social networks? That I can’t answer. The unfortunate fact is that it happens.

2. Delete them: The ‘If No One Sees It, It Didn’t Happen’ approach. The only thing worse than ignoring a negative comment is deleting it. It only serves to anger the customer more and give them cause to react by telling ALL of their friends how awful your company and its employees are. It’s important to note that the average Facebook and Twitter user has 100+ friends and followers, so a complaint from one or even a few customers grows exponentially, costing you customers you didn’t even have yet.

3. Respond in kind: The ‘I’ll show you!’ approach. Let’s say a customer leaves an angry complaint on your company’s Facebook page or Twitter feed. You feel the complaint is unjustified or, for whatever reason, it makes you angry and you can’t help but respond with an angry or defensive comment. Just as with the first two approaches, your response will only serve to exacerbate an already negative situation. Remember the old adage: The customer is always right – no matter how wrong he is! Also, remember that the complaining customer is not the only person who will be privy to this exchange.

4. Placate with a hollow apology: The ‘Gosh, Sorry You Feel That Way. We’ll Try To Do Better.’ approach. The problem with this response is that it doesn’t appear to be sincere, nor does it offer a real solution to the complaint, which, again, only serves to exacerbate the situation. People are aware when they are being appeased. Most importantly, this approach offers no solution to the problem and the customer may not give you a second chance.

Social media managers make these mistakes all the time, especially when there are multiple complaints (such as the one I covered a while back in my blog post regarding Ann Taylor brands and Cyber Monday). They ignored, deleted, and placated – all while continuing to offer new online sales and discounts without first fixing their substandard site. They responded to a few complaints by asking the customers to call or email customer service. For days afterward, there were complaints posted about not being able to get through by phone and getting no email response. How can they possibly believe this would have a positive outcome? What should they have done instead?

I suggest that there is truly only one proper response when managing complaints on your brand’s social networks:

5. Offer an apology AND a solution: The ‘We Hear You and Value Our Customers. We Will Make This Right Immediately!’ approach This is your opportunity to turn a disgruntled customer into your brand’s evangelist! This person (or people) obviously had some sense of loyalty to your brand if they’ve spent their money with you, “liked” your Facebook fan page, and/or followed you on Twitter. Now, however, they’ve had an unpleasant experience and usually they just want to know that they’ve been listened to and that you (the people behind the brand) will make things right. In Ann Taylor’s case, there were problems with their website. They approached it in the ways outlined above, continued to send emails and post to social networks with apologies for inconvenience, and extended the time for the sales. What they didn’t do was fix the website, making it appear that they weren’t ‘getting it’ and, worse, that they didn’t care.

There's no such a thing as a bad publicity, I mean it. Why do you have to treat bad comments as a bad news? We're talking about social media and an exposure of your services/products/website etc. Believe me, even a bad or negative comment/feedback/review is better than an ignorance. Just give it a thought. Cheers! N

I usually just ignore them. But if I have a good comeback, I'd definitely respond. Heh!

Most of the people who leave negative comments won't give their full name or have a profile picture. It just shows they can't be taken seriously.

People seem to be giving emotional answers to business decisions?

If you bring emotions into it you will make poor decisions.

If I receive negative feedback I make sure to give an appropriate and professional response dealing directly with the complaint, with the aim of resolution. If you have a brand you have a public image, and its up to you to decide what image that is.

If the comment is obviously spam or just somebody trolling, I usually just ignore, delete and ban. If it's a legitimate complaint, I respond politely and try to reach a positive outcome.

You are right about never taking anything in social media personally. I also agree about deleting "troll comments" that only insult people but do not really contribute to the discussion. I even delete those comments that are full of falsehoods/lies/propaganda which the commenter would be able to recognize themselves if they were more analytical, reasonable or open-minded enough to consider that they can be wrong and did some fact checking or more research themselves.

You could respond in a kind manner and try to correct your mistake.I often got lots of negative comments I used to delete them.Without any hesitation.

I just delete them. Most of the negative comments I receive on my business facebook page are dummy accounts. You can tell because you'll be able to see that they just created an account, empty short info and whatnot. But if I'm in a mood to answer them (in kind), I do. Trolls are everywhere tho.

There are many ways how to deal with that.
You can create some realistic "fake" accounts and then troll your enemies or support yourself.
Its much easier to fight with bad comments with multiplie accounts.
But sometimes it is better to answer personally or just delete them.

In FB, you can use the page moderation function in the settings section, to filter posts that match keywords or phrases. Then any post that is matched is not displayed, except to the person who wrote the post or their friends.

All 3 are very good ways to deal with negative comments.

What you have as #2 Turning them into something positive is what i like to do all the time. It shows others that you care and are willing to solve issues.

If the same person keeps posting negative comments then it's time to delete the troll.