Dealing With Bad Comments – Answer Or Delete?
Dealing with bad comments on social media or blogs is unfortunately a fact of life online. It’s easier with a blog since you can just install a plugin that more or less does it for you. Akismet is one of the best. But dealing with bad comments or negativity on social media takes a little more thought.
Should you simply delete the bad stuff where possible, or should you take time to to reply? Both are tempting and depend on how the individual has expressed their opinion. Personally I routinely remove any comments that contain links because that’s just someone trying to piggyback on my hard work.
Some time ago I uploaded a video to my Youtube channel explaining why one of the companies I promote – SFM – is not any kind of scam. I explained what SFM actually is then used screen-recording software to show my own SFM back office in detail. That video has had thousands of views and generates comments, subscribers, leads and sales regularly.
What Are They Trying To Achieive?
Luckily most of the comments are positive. It’s the sort of information anyone doing research on an online business wants after all. But I do get the odd negative comment. In dealing with bad comments on this video I ask myself what the commenter is trying to achieve.
If someone has clearly missed the point or obviously hasn’t watched the entire video I might reply. To my mind that’s more honest than simply removing any comment that isn’t positive or that might look bad to future viewers. It’s also in the spirit of the video itself – to inform.
Why do people post bad comments? Who knows really. Maybe they’ve had a bad experience with something online and have an axe to grind. Maybe they are just Trolls – doing it for fun or badness. Some are trying to divert your traffic to something they are selling.
Dealing With Bad Comments Constructively
One truth about the internet is that you will find whatever you are looking for. If you are convinced that something is a scam and just want to prove it, you will find the “evidence” you want to find. For a laugh I just searched “Is Google a scam”. It returned 69million results. Many of them are just using the word Scam to get traffic – it’s an old trick. Try it with anything and see for yourself – “Is (insert blank) a scam”.
Bear all that in mind when dealing with bad comments and negativity online. Good marketing is all about the discussion so it’s better to have a balanced spread. The odd bad comment in a sea of good ones can actually work in your favour. If you’ve answered questions and interacted honestly with people in a discussion, a solitary, ill informed bad comment can look quite stupid.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time as they say. There will always be people who mistrust anything that’s being promoted or sold online. What can you do. My advice for dealing with bad comments – if they are not being offensive, answer them once. If they become a pest – get rid. Life’s too short to try and sell to everyone. That’s actually not what marketers should be doing anyway.
Dealing With Bad Comments – Best Policy
dmonline
May 4, 2015
Dealing With Bad Comments – Answer Or Delete?
Should you simply delete the bad stuff where possible, or should you take time to to reply? Both are tempting and depend on how the individual has expressed their opinion. Personally I routinely remove any comments that contain links because that’s just someone trying to piggyback on my hard work.
Some time ago I uploaded a video to my Youtube channel explaining why one of the companies I promote – SFM – is not any kind of scam. I explained what SFM actually is then used screen-recording software to show my own SFM back office in detail. That video has had thousands of views and generates comments, subscribers, leads and sales regularly.
What Are They Trying To Achieive?
If someone has clearly missed the point or obviously hasn’t watched the entire video I might reply. To my mind that’s more honest than simply removing any comment that isn’t positive or that might look bad to future viewers. It’s also in the spirit of the video itself – to inform.
Why do people post bad comments? Who knows really. Maybe they’ve had a bad experience with something online and have an axe to grind. Maybe they are just Trolls – doing it for fun or badness. Some are trying to divert your traffic to something they are selling.
Dealing With Bad Comments Constructively
One truth about the internet is that you will find whatever you are looking for. If you are convinced that something is a scam and just want to prove it, you will find the “evidence” you want to find. For a laugh I just searched “Is Google a scam”. It returned 69million results. Many of them are just using the word Scam to get traffic – it’s an old trick. Try it with anything and see for yourself – “Is (insert blank) a scam”.
Bear all that in mind when dealing with bad comments and negativity online. Good marketing is all about the discussion so it’s better to have a balanced spread. The odd bad comment in a sea of good ones can actually work in your favour. If you’ve answered questions and interacted honestly with people in a discussion, a solitary, ill informed bad comment can look quite stupid.
You can’t please all of the people all of the time as they say. There will always be people who mistrust anything that’s being promoted or sold online. What can you do. My advice for dealing with bad comments – if they are not being offensive, answer them once. If they become a pest – get rid. Life’s too short to try and sell to everyone. That’s actually not what marketers should be doing anyway.