Queen Bee Marketing’s Blog About Marketing, SEO, and Design.

Many corporations, of all sizes and industries, are turning to blogging as a way to interact with customers and peers. Approximately 5% of Fortune 500 companies blog, and so many more small to medium sized businesses blog as well. Most companies see the value in having conversations with the public and giving their company a personality. But some companies are still hesitant to get involved. One of the biggest fears is that they will receive bad publicity through negative comments by customers. This is definitely a possibility, but it isn’t as bad as it sounds - it may even help your blog.

Planning ahead for negative comments is the first step towards protecting your blog and keeping it professional. I recently asked Paul Boisvert of The Official Yahoo Store Blog to give his input on the topic of negative comments. He gave this advice:

Follow your own posted comment policy. In other words, work out the policy before allowing comments and walk through some various scenarios of what you would and would not allow. Better to work this out in advance than try to overly moderate your blog to stamp out any flame posts after they are in progress. Overall though having a blog means opening a dialog with your customers and the public. You cannot have a forum without allowing people to disagree.

Creating a comment policy, and sticking to it, can greatly reduce the stress of worrying about negative comments. At the same time, your policy needs to be fair to your visitors. Automatically deleting any comments that make you look bad will lead to distrust of your blog and your company. Having a blog means having a conversation, not a one-sided advertisement for your company.

When legitimate, negative concerns do arise on your blog it’s best to be upfront and address them as soon as possible. It’s okay to delete spam or off topic statements, but an actual problem someone is having with your company, product, or services should be addressed in a professional manner. You will gain much more trust from your visitors by allowing disagreements and resolving them. Other visitors will see that you care about your customers and are willing to listen.

In certain circumstances it might even be alright to stir the pot a little. Don’t be afraid to ask for feedback from your visitors. Ask what they do or don’t like about a certain product, service, aspect of the company, etc. You have a free focus group, why not use it? Listen to the good, the bad, and the ugly of what people have to say. People love to give their opinion, especially when they know it’s being heard. Address concerns and learn from the comments.