Respond to Bogus Feedback Immediately

Respond to Bogus Feedback Immediately If you receive bogus feedback or criticism, respond ASAP!

This is especially true if that feedback is unfounded. As I always explain to my clients, always take the high road as this is the long run can turn a possible negative into a positive. [ see blog post entitled: How to deal with negative reviews ]

However, this past weekend I came across a comment on one of the social media sites I manage that was so wrong.  In fact, the commenter had this company confused with another one.

Let me give you a little background: The commenter in question was telling people to never use this company as they were horrible and they just fired a guy who was involved in the California wildfires. She said this company fired him, as the fire destroyed his company van while he was trying to save his family. She said this company deserves to go bankrupt and they’re horrible, et cetera et cetera.

Now if this were true I would agree, and in truth I would’ve quit this company, No matter how much they paid me!

BUT, they had this company confused with an East Coast Company with franchises in California. My client is an independent company, with no franchises and only operates in Massachusetts. So this was just a case of confusion, perhaps the company had a name similar or something like that, I never did find out.

So I responded to her that we are not in California and don’t have franchises anywhere. She went in and deleted her comment, and there was no damage done to the company’s reputation.

Now what if I had ignored this comment, as many companies seem to do on social media?

The company would’ve faced the possibility of this goes viral and then losing tons of business. At that point he probably would’ve reacted, but they may have done irreversible damage the reputation, and even faced going out of business for something he did not do.

Can you imagine working so hard to build your business and having it torn down by a viral comment about something you did not do?

The problem with the age in which we live in, is people immediately respond to things on social media. Once something is out there, it’s out there for good. So if you don’t respond to them quickly, you really face an uncertain future. Because your reputation is something you can’t get back once tarnished. This is your most valuable asset and you must do everything you can to protect it.

So as I said, respond to comments as soon as possible. Now, this was over the weekend and it’s not always possible to be at your computer or even your smartphone 24/7. This is why it helps to have another set of eyes and ears paying attention to your social media and web properties.

Bottom Line:

This is why I always stress to use a quality website management company. So, in the event you miss one of these horrible, mistaken comments, there is somebody else that may pick up the ball and run with it and save your business.

Nothing ventured, nothing gained

This expression is as true today as it was when it was first uttered by Benjamin Franklin.

I thought of this expression when I received an email recently. It was from a client who I’ve had for several years. They were a bit disillusioned as their web store wasn’t getting any orders recently.

I originally met with them and we came up with a game plan which I felt would give them a very good chance to succeed with their web store.

  I told them they needed to do the following:

  1. New products:  I advised that they will need to constantly be adding new products and seeing what works and what doesn’t. Not everything sells online. So if your products are not selling, try something else. They seemed to understand and said they would constantly send new products and evaluate their current product line.
  2. Social media: we all agreed that one way they could drive people to their site to purchase products would be by constantly posting to Facebook. I recommended 3 to 5 posts a week, and they agreed.
  3. Blogging: these guys live in a vacation area that a lot of people love. It is a perfect thing to blog about, their neighborhood, their product line, and so much more content right in front of them. They promised to send me a blog post at least 2 to 4 times a month.
  4. AdWords: one way to get your product line out there is to advertise. As they have a narrowly focused business, an adwords campaign would be a very inexpensive way to advertise their business nationwide. They were going to set up an ad words account and I would help them get it going and monitor.

Well, fast forward years later they never said did anything they said that they would do above. Now, I understand sometimes people busy with other things and don’t have time to spend on their websites. This is why they hire us, but we do need the participation of clients. They need to send us the products to add, blog posts (or at least subjects, we can write posts) and items to post to social media. Now of course we kept up their e-commerce software, all their plug-ins and everything else, we held up our end of the bargain.

I feel bad when a client doesn’t succeed, but it does bother me when people in business don’t even spend a minuscule amount of time. It is the whoa is me mentality. Someone doesn’t want to work hard yet they want to succeed. Let me tell you, this doesn’t work for any business on the planet.

Bottom Line: Hire a good firm to manage your website. Then put the time in and work to see your website succeeds. Treat web tasks as must do’s, not optional.

Nothing Ventured, nothing gained.