At some point Digital Marketers, Social Media Marketers, Managers will all have to deal with negative attention and even negative comments on social media that could spread like wildfire in less than a couple of hours! 

As a creative management firm who handles Social Media Marketing (SMM) for a number of companies around the United States, we can confidently say that it just sometimes happens! 

A company cannot always control everything that is being shared on social media, but what a company can control is their reputation, responses and own up if need be at the moment. While negative comments on social media are a company’s worst nightmare on social media, it can be a positive learning experience for the future. 

What happens when a company gets a negative comment or one that spirals out of control? On the other hand, what should a company do if their company goes “viral” for all of the wrong reasons? 

Here are three steps that all companies should take to control the situation at hand. 

1. Crisis management 

All companies have crisis management plans in place to handle the smallest to the largest disasters or situations that could possibly happen! One of the crisis management plans that should be in place is one for SMM! A well-rounded digital crisis management plan could be the difference between a couple of negative comments on social media or an entire campaign going viral for negative reasons.   

While negative comments on social media do not always need a crisis management plan, and most of the time just need a management level response, a post that goes viral for negative reasons will need a crisis management plan in place. This is because once a post goes viral, it can’t be contained. This post will be shared by hundreds of people, shared on several social media platforms and can live for years to come. 

A company always wants to go “viral” for the attention, but when this attention is an accident, this negative viral content has a way of resurfacing over and over again and causing the exact opposite that a company was searching for. 

2. Always respond 

It is always important to respond to all comments and messages on social media whether it is negative or positive. One of the worst things that a company can do is to ignore the negative comments on social media.  This only provides another angry customer or client with another reason to dislike your brand. It takes up to 15 times before a consumer starts to trust a company, but only takes one bad experience to ruin this hard work. 

Our Social Media Marketers try to never miss a single comment from anyone because social media is all about engaging with consumers! Even if you simply respond with an emoji, it is a response and consumers appreciate it. 

When it comes to negative comments, our marketers always recommend to deescalate the situation and send this person a Direct Message (DM)! 

A simple comment on the negative comment saying, “Hi X, please contact us immediately at (800)-234-9858.” Shows two things- that your company cares about its consumers and their experience! 

3. Apologize or show action 

There are moments when simply releasing an apology is not enough. A company needs to be sincerely apologetic and show that it is going to be working towards correcting the problem at hand. 

It is not enough to simply say that change is going to happen, a company has to actively show throughout time that this change is being made. Whether that is with better products or services, donating to charities, getting involved and even firing an employee if need be. 

While a company cannot always stop negative comments on social media and the worst type of viral content, it is important to remain calm and never escalate the situation. For help with SMM or other digital strategies, give our experts a call today.