According to a survey from Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia, nearly one half (47 percent) of companies personally engage with consumers when dealing with online negative criticism. The second most common response (mentioned by 33 percent) was to focus on improving products to further address any negativity.
A few chose even more proactive methods:
- Seventeen percent encouraged others to speak more positively about the company;
- Fourteen percent attempted to get the offending comment removed by the publisher/blogger;
- Twelve percent created content to push offending results down search ending rankings.
Still, a sizeable 30 percent chose "None of the Above" - either not directly addressing the negative criticism or not intentionally countering negative comments with a focus on improved products or services.
When asked about how they use Twitter, 47 percent said brand monitoring and 27 percent said reacting to customer service issues and inquiries. The highest use of Twitter was for publicizing new content, at 62 percent.
"To address this, there needs to be more education around how to deal with negative PR and social media crisis management, as well as best practice on how to engage in the first place," according to the report. "There is clearly an opportunity here for agencies to better educate their clients."
Discussion Questions: What should and shouldn't companies be doing when dealing with online negative criticism from consumers?