Social Media Damage Control

Due to the way social media is setup it is a fun and directly interactive way to get to know your existing customers and rapidly meet new customers. Unfortunately also due to the speed of social media it is also a quick way for your reputation to get damaged and cause your business to suffer as a result. Ignoring social media is not a way to avoid your damaging effects to your reputation since your customers are already using social media. Instead by being active on social media and engaging with your customers you get to control the message about your reputation. When negative situations do pop up on you will be able to address them quickly and look good doing so in your customer’s minds.

Skip This Tip and You May Find Yourself in a Bad Social Media Situation

Avoid getting into bad social media situations from the get go and you will spare yourself a lot of headache. While you may favor one political party over another or have thoughts on a certain hot social issue it is best to keep those opinions off of your business social media accounts unless your business involves those issues. You are certainly entitled to your opinions and no one is suggesting otherwise, but everyone else is also entitled to their opinion as well. Whether you are selling baked goods, restaurant food, cleaning services or other goods/services on social media that is all you should be talking about on social media. Your political opinion will not sway your customers one way or the other and instead may cause you to get into a war of words with customers who may then bring in other people, which will only serve to drown out your message that you have the best donuts and coffee in town. So unless you are paid to run a social media account for Candidate A, who happens to be running for mayor, keep your social media message strictly related to what your core business is about.

Control Who Has Access To Your Accounts

If you are a small business with one or two people in charge then it is easier to control access to your social media accounts to just one person. Where you are in a larger organization and maybe have multiple people managing your social media accounts caution should be taken to ensure only those people you trust have access to your accounts and those people are also practicing safe computing. By safe computing I mean that their own computers are properly secured against hacking and theft. That they are only accessing your social media accounts on computers or devices you provided to them and not on their personal devices. If their devices happen to be stolen you can just as easily lose control of your social media accounts and your marketing message as well. Proceed with caution when allowing others to have access to your social media accounts.

Irate Customers

So you have a customer who is mad at something and just happens to take it out on you on social media because you happened to be most recent interaction they had just before turning on their smart phone. Fighting fire with fire is not the answer when asking how to deal with this angry customer. We don’t know what is going through the customers mind and maybe they don’t even know that they are over reacting due to some other stress in their life and wrongly taking it out on you. So rather than ignoring the customer or responding rudely to the customer and their negative social media post take some time to cool off if you need to. Then go back and politely respond that you are sorry about the issue they brought up and to please come back in so you can make things right.

For most customers, apologizing and offering to make it right ends the situation then and there and you will probably never hear from them again since they have also cooled off and realized they may have over reacted. There are other customers who due to the perceived anonymity of social media may continue to try and push your buttons by further berating your business, your staff and even you personally. As a business owner or social media person for a business you should never allow a dispute on social media to carry on longer than 3-4 comments by you and the person complaining. If you can’t resolve their problem and they continue to post comments after each one of your responses your final response should be to ask them to please come back into your place of business and that you will try to resolve any issues they might have. After that final response there should be no further comments from you to that customer since in everyone else’ s mind you did the right thing by offering to fix whatever problem that customer was having. The fact that the customer won’t stop posting on your social media account only makes them look bad to everyone else and you come out looking great since you tried your best to fix the problem.

If the customer insists on using profanity on your social media account the best way to address that is to tell them that your social media account is viewed by young and old alike and to please refrain from using profanity. Deleting social media posts with profanity from an irate is perfectly within your rights, but I would caution from deleting the entire message that still may have a complaint that others see as legitimate. If you can delete just the profanity then do so and let the remaining comment stay. Not all social media platforms allow you to edit other people’s comments so if you can’t delete the profanity alone, delete the comment and explain to everyone why you deleted the comment and summarize the customer’s issue and how you have addressed them. If the customer continues to use profanity after you have asked them not to banning them from posting on your social media account may be the best course of action.

Any time you are deleting comments whether in their entirety or partially you should always keep a copy of the original comments for your record. You can keep a copy on your computer by taking a screenshot of the comments before you delete them or by printing out the page where the comments are found. The reason for keeping a copy of the comments before deleting them is if later on the customer’s story changes you have a something to show them otherwise. Also if worse comes to worse and for some reason a lawsuit is filed, having a copy of the comments is helpful to refresh memories.

Harassment/Stalking

What happens when an irate customer takes thing too far and begins to harass your business social media accounts where ever they are located? Sometimes not only is harassing behavior used by the irate customer, they can go even further and start stalking you online and posting negative comments in any and all of your posts. You may be tempted to fight back by countering every message they post but this only results in you wasting your time and you possibly looking bad in front of other customers. Additionally the continual attention from the business to the irate customer only serves to keep them going since they may enjoy the attention.

Where the comments are childish or nonsensical your best bet is to delete those comments without response. Usually when the customer sees nothing is happening other than their comments being deleted they should tire and go away. Where the comments are simply restating a previous claim by the customer leaving the comment up in one location on your social media profiles is fine, the rest can be deleted to keep your page clean.

On the other hand if you are being stalked or harassed in your social media accounts the first thing to look into is banning the customer’s account from interacting with your account. By banning the customer’s account (depending on the social media platform) they should not be able to post anything further on your social media space and may also be restricted from seeing anything you post as well. Some individuals will take it a step further and create multiple accounts to go around the ban you setup. The best bet in these situations is to keep banning these new accounts that are continuing to harass you, though keeping copies of some of the postings and account might be advisable. Ignore and ban is the best solution and the least amount of effort and stress on you. If you should happen to make a mistake and even respond once to these trolling accounts they will likely continue since they succeeded in getting you to respond. By continually banning the accounts eventually they should get bored and move on.

In the event the customer does not want to move on and continues to harass and stalk your social media accounts you may want to consider legal actions. This is where keeping records of the original comments will help because usually the first few comments from the irate customer came from a social media account that has their real information about them. The subsequent fake social media accounts will likely have fake information and does you little good if you need an attorney to send a letter to the person who has taken things to an extreme. So copies of the original comments will lead back to the real person and a letter from an attorney asking them to stop can be pretty persuasive.

Of course if the harassing posts on your social media accounts become violent or threaten harm in some way you should get in touch with the police. Be sure to show the police any copies of comments you have kept from the past. Violent or threatening language is usually against most social media company’s terms of service as well. Meaning if you report the violent/threatening language to the social media company where the comments are coming from they may also help out and permanently ban the accounts.

Final Thoughts

This article is by no means designed to scare you off of social media. Social media used properly can help connect with new and existing customers to help boost your business. If you use socially media incorrectly it can cause problems for your real life business, but the same can be said for any part of your business done wrong. Socially media opens up advertising and directly connecting with your customers like nothing else before. Ignore it at your own peril.

If you need help with social media or would like to discuss how to respond to negative social media commentary about your business get in touch with me!