Life used to be so much easier when all a company needed was a static website that, if the company were local, gave the location and hours and, if the company were national or international, sold products on the site or gave an info@companyURL email address.
That life is GONE – GONE FOREVER. And while it may be comforting to hold out as long as possible before embracing the new world of social media, you may be putting your company at risk by procrastinating on accepting the new world.
Let’s look at this from the point of view of an imaginary company that we shall call National Restaurant Chain.
National Restaurant Chain has stuck its toes into the social media pond. There’s a Facebook page with lots of people, a relatively new Twitter account, and a website that makes it very difficult to learn that the company does indeed have a social media presence.
On any one day the company gets good comments and not-so-good comments on its Facebook page and perhaps its Twitter account. This is expected – the best customer service organization in the world cannot please everyone all of the time. There are bound to be people, for example, who got out of bed on the wrong side and just can’t be pleased.
Now the truth is that most people intuitively defend themselves when “accused” of something. Especially when we feel the criticism is unjust, we rush to set the record straight.
In the 1970s the book WHEN I SAY NO I FEEL GUILTY by Manuel J. Smith came out. It explained, among other things, how to use assertiveness techniques to block negative feedback from people who are determined to criticize you no matter what you say in your defense.
I have been a proponent of these assertiveness techniques ever since the book came out and I took several classes on these techniques.
Now let’s zip up the years to 2010 and the world of social media. With a click of the send button on a computer someone can criticize your business and spread that criticism to the entire globe. And what can you do about it?
If it is legitimate criticism, such as your company promised to give a refund for a burnt sandwich and didn’t keep the promise, you can immediately give the refund and post that you did this on your social media accounts.
But what do you do if it is the kind of criticism that no matter how strongly you deny it there are people who will insist on believing it? Especially what do you do if you have been procrastinating about having a strategic company-wide social media policy?
You stop denying the criticism – after all, every time you talk about the situation you are allowing more people to weigh in with their pro and con opinions.
In other words, you sidestep the negative comments and instead promote your positive actions.
You do this by effectively using your social media presence. And if your social media presence is not very effective, you quickly expand its effectiveness.
© 2010 Miller Mosaic, LLC
Phyllis Zimbler Miller (@ZimblerMiller on Twitter) has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is the co-founder of the social media marketing company Miller Mosaic Power Marketing, which implements positive social media marketing campaigns for companies that may find themselves behind the eight ball. If you need help right now, email powermarketing@millermosaicllc.com to learn how power marketing can help you climb out of the hot water.
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