How Negative Facebook Comments Can Help Your Brand

Think for a moment about the most important elements of any good relationship: honesty and communication. Almost everyone would agree that these are necessary to have in order for a relationship to work. Whether businesses realize it or not, customers have relationships with brands. As in any relationship, customers, too, expect honesty and communication. That’s why deleting those negative Facebook comments can actually be detrimental to your brand. Let’s take a look at how allowing negative comments can actually help your brand.
Opportunity to Show You Care
No matter how quickly you try to delete a negative comment, odds are, there are already fans who saw it. Deleting the comment can actually lead to disastrous consequences with many fans jumping ship because they view the act of deleting their concerns as a display that you don’t care about them.
Instead of deleting the comment, try to address the situation in a positive manner. If a customer complains that he can’t install your software, provide the number to the help desk and offer to solve the problem. If a customer received the wrong clothing size, apologize, offer the customer service number and a friendly reminder of your easy return policy. Show that you care about your customers.
Opportunity for Your Fans to Build Your Brand
If your brand has an overall positive image (and if you reach out to customers regularly, you should know if it’s perceived positively or not), the negative comments will be few and far between. Still, you cannot control social media. You can only manage it by participating in a meaningful and authentic way.
When negative comments do occur, give the comment a while to settle. You may just find that your loyal customers are jumping in to defend your brand or sing its praises. Positive comments drown out negative ones, and allowing the negative comments shows more integrity than deleting the comment.
When Deleting the Comment is Best
Occasionally, you may find that people are trolling your brand page. This means that, for no reason, people are making negative comments on your post. If the comments are completely irrelevant to your product or brand – or if the comments are hateful, violent, vitriolic or encourages or brings harm to others – little good can come of them. For example, if you run a rehab center yet someone is making comments encouraging addicts to continue using, those comments are harmful to your clients. In those cases, it is best to simply delete the comments and, if asked why they are gone, indicate that they were off topic, harmful or offensive to some fans.
Negative comments aren’t always bad publicity, not if you take these tips on board.

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