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…is that you don’t delete and ignore negative comments. Or at least that’s the case if you’re a company or brand using social media to communicate with your consumers and users. Burying your head in the sand and hoping it will all just go away (the ‘ostrich approach’ as I like to call it) might seem like the easiest option at the time, but it’s also quite possibly the worst response you can have to a problem.
Think about it like this – you are essentially in a long-term relationship with your Twitter followers and Facebook fans. You’ve courted them with your extensive advertising and PR campaigns, you’ve convinced them to try out your product (a first date, if you will), and now that they’ve agreed to commit to you on a public forum such as social media…well, it looks like you’re officially going steady (albeit a slightly polygamous analogy). So what do you do when your angry girlfriend suspects you of cheating and starts bombarding you with livid text messages and phone calls? Do you just avoid her and wait it out until the storm blows over? No, you most certainly do not – on the contrary, you turn into the most considerate and caring boyfriend to ever walk the earth.
ChapStick recently learnt this the hard way when they had to face the negative backlash resulting from a recent advertisement posted on their Facebook page. Instead of dealing with the problem and placating the situation, they simply tried to erase it. Of course, this only fuelled their consumers’ disapproval further and they had no choice but to issue an apology in the end. Probably would have been easier to do that from the start, don’t you think?
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