Chapter 28
Negative Comments
Are you scared of negative comments?
One of the characteristic features of a blog is that readers can leave comments that remain on the site for future readers to see. In fact, today's social Internet is full of opportunities for perfect strangers to rate your content and post comments. Many people (and businesses) are reluctant to post their content because they're worried about negative comments. This is an area where the younger generation and the older generation have very different perceptions. Older people think this constant ability to comment is a bad thing. Younger people think it's a good thing. Which is it? The answer depends on how you handle the situation.
Consider a restaurant that receives a negative comment on Yelp about their spaghetti. “The spaghetti sucks.” If the restaurant has verified their account on Yelp (see Chapter 48 for more details), they have the ability to respond to each comment. So what should they do? Get mad? Maybe, but there's a better way. Consider the following response:
“Thank you for telling us what nobody else would. We've changed the recipe. Among other things, we're now using ground turkey instead of beef and we're also using organic whole wheat pasta. Please come back and try it again.”
Personally, I'd be curious to try the spaghetti. You may feel different, but the point stands. There are productive and unproductive ways to reply to negative comments. The first rule: always reply. Explain how you're fixing ...
