Don't be Afraid of Social Media Backlash

In our last blog we spent some time talking about the pit falls and negatives of social media marketing. If you’re trying to decide whether or not to engage in social media marketing, you’ll want to way the positives against the negatives. Let me just tip my hand and say that I believe the positives so out way the negatives that in almost every situation, it is smart to get involved in social media marketing.

There is one major reason people are leery of social media and online advertising: everything good, and especially everything bad, spreads like wild fire on the web. In the span of hours or days hundreds of thousands of people can hear of your failures. While I’m not going to deny that bad news travels fast on the web, it’s not a good reason to not be involved in social media. Fearing the explosive nature of the web is not a good reason to avoid advertising because, like it or not, the web will still talk about you. You could have zero online presence and be the laughing stalk of the web. If you are online that at least you know what the web’s opinion is of you.

Bad Press Happens
Often the most damaging online backlash is not related to the company’s online presence. For example there was a YouTube video that showed a Comcast technician sleeping in a customer’s home while waiting on hold with Comcast headquarters.


This video obviously created lots of negative press for Comcast. But this negative press would have happened whether Comcast was online or not. Your customers will use social media to talk to you whether you like it or not. If you are involved with social media at least you can join the conversation.

Dell's Damage Control
A perfect example of joining the conversation and using social media to perform some damage control is Dell’s Twitter account DellCares. A Twitter user was tweeting about how bad an experience he had with Dell, DellCares then responded to his tweet and asked how they could help fix the situation. Now everyone who read that tweet thinks about how Dell tried to fix the problem, and not about how bad their friends experience was.

While the web can be a scary place because of how fast news travels, don’t get cold feet. You always feel like you have little control over what people say about you on the web, but if you don’t get on the web, you will no control.