5 Ways To Combat Negative Blog Comments
12/08/2005
The #1 concern I'm hearing from organizations interested in exploring blogs to support marketing strategies is, "But what about the negative comments? How do we control people posting bad things about our brand or our company or our toilet paper?" Well...perhaps not TP but one never knows.
People. People. People. Marketing has changed. The world has changed. It changed while you were not looking. It changed when the internet and email made it easy for anyone to talk to the anyone in the world. 
Fifty years ago, my grandma's front piazza (porch) was where her world congregated to kibbutz. Now even 80-year old divas are on-line and writing blogs.
Bottom-line with over 50 million people chatting it up on blogs if you turn comments off you loose the home court advantage. People will talk about your company, your products, your staff and yeah, even your TP somewhere. Why would you not want that discussion to take place where you can easily monitor it and respond?
To turn comments on. To turn comments off. This has be come an old debate in the blogosphere. One of the benefits of a marketing blog is the opportunity to dialogue with customers, prospects and stakeholders. Sorry y'all, no comments does not make a conversation. It's called a monologue. (see Dad my theatre major came in handy after all!). One person takes center stage with no opportunity for direct feedback. For my money, a blog without comments and trackbacks is an on-line newsletter. And that's not a negative comment.
Great example of highly focused brand kibitz on a non "corporate blog" is McChronicles. This blog about McDonalds welcomed it's 18,000 visitor last night. A Google search for McChronicles pulls 15,900 results. That's a lot of Big Macs! U.S. News and World Report highlighted McCs in an article about customers creating buzz; McChronicles is a live case study of citizen journalism and customer evangelism. McDonald owners are asking McChronicles to review their restaurants and even Corporate McD people have been known to drop by to listen (tracked by referral stats). However, the folks at McD's must be busy chowing down on their burgers since a sanctioned McD blog has not yet surfaced.
If you're still not convenienced that comments on are a good thing, here are ...
5 Ways To Combat Negative Blog Comments
5. Turn off comments
4. Monitor comments
3. Develop a comment policy
Include on your navigation bar and above the comment section
2. Delete comments that do not meet your guidelinesThe Number One Way To Combat Negative Blog Comments ...
1. Show 'em what you are made of!
Use negative comments (those that express legit concerns) as a way to demonstrate how you handle customer concerns.
Keep in mind, today's piazzas are not just porches built around our homes but extend to the far corners of the world. That means our customers' sphere of influence is not limited to their around the corner neighborhood but anywhere there is an internet connection.
Since we're friends, I'll let you in a little secret. Understanding that companies no longer control the message (influence yes. control no.) and that customers have more power than ever before in "helping sell your product", you gain a huge advantage over your competition - those that are trying to swim upstream against the current. It's an exciting, new world. Don't be afraid to become apart of it.
Technorati Tags: Blogging, McChronicles, McDonalds, Blogs, Marketing
