Posted in Public Relations, Viral Marketing, Week With Whuffie, social media, social media marketing
Article details 3 comments
2/06 2009

Week With Whuffie and Negative Feedback

Continuing our dive into the world of Whuffie we are going to talk about the concept of negative feedback.

Many companies fail to adopt a social media strategy for their business because of a fear of negative feedback. I have been preaching continuously about ridding yourself and your company of that fear… because it is going to happen anyway. It is a vital part to marketing in the social media realm: reputation management.

In the book it talks about how to combat negative feedback in order to increase your social capital (or whuffie):

“The way you respond to negative feedback is as important for building whuffie as your response to positive feedback. In face, an open and nonconfrontational response to negative feeback can be even more beneficial for building whuffie than multiple responses to positive feedback. In every critic there is an opportunity to create a strong advocate for your company.” (pg. 89)

The one sentence to take away from the above excerpt (and I am going to repeat it again) is this: In every critic there is an opportunity to create a strong advocate for your company.

It is extremely important to remember that more often than not a critic is just looking for a response. They are wanting to understand reason for a specific action that brought along their negativity. Respond in kind and remember to be conscious of thier motives.

Never take negative feedback personally. Learn from your mistakes and become a better and stronger company for the future.

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  1. Lilian Mahoukou
    2/06 2009

    I think negative feedbacks are great opportunities to engage and to find out what could be brought to the table.

    In a certain way, innovation could come from those kind of interactions.

  2. Dave Culbertson
    2/06 2009

    Kyle,

    That's wonderful logic but a little too "soft" for most organizations. As research by Forrester has proven, consumers want complete information about a product or service – both good and bad. At least 1/2 of Amazon's value is the reviews. As a contrast, check out Woot's copy each day. Since the offered product has no time to build up reviews as on Amazon, Woot will often give both the pros and cons. And it's a winning approach.

  3. Wget » Counter-Strike: Condition Zero
    2/06 2009

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