Negative Blog Comments: How do You Handle Them?

New clients almost always ask this question: what do I do if someone leaves a negative comment on my blog?

A recent post by Jeremiah Owyang answers the question of negative comments beautifully and completely reflects The Blog Squad's beliefs as well.

A negative comment is an opportunity.

An opportunity to learn from your customer/client/subscriber/reader about a potential problem in your business.

An opportunity to clarify your position.

An opportunity to get valuable feedback and improve your business.

An opportunity to improve your relationship with the commenter and others who may be reading the comment.

An opportunity to correct a mistake.

An opportunity to take the high road, acknowledge possible issues and correct them.

Of course it's best if you find out about the problem as soon as possible. This means you should be getting email notifications as soon as someone posts on your blog so you can read, review and respond quickly.

What if someone posts negative comments about you or your business elsewhere on the web? You better have Google Alerts set up so you're notified and again, can respond quickly. At the minimum you need to have alerts for your name and for your business name.

The other question that comes up is whether or not you should delete negative comments. I'll open that question up to you. I'm curious to know how others respond to negative comments on your blog, forum or website.  Leave your comments below (nice ones only! LOL, just kidding, respond how you wish!)

Comments

[Cindy Szponder]

How important to learn how to turn lemons into lemonade. Thank you for this important reminder and for the tips on how to do it.

[Ruthan Brodsky]

Answer isn't black or white.
I would screen comments.
I believe negative comments that are constructive should be published. Ex: different opinions, different approaches, correcting info/data published on your blog (does not include spelling errors; thank that reader personally). In golf you're fortunate to hit a half dozen perfect shots a round. There's also more than one way to get to a par 5 green in 3. So it is in blogging(and probably in tennis, too).There's much to be learned from mistakes and negative comments.

[Technology Slice]

I agree with Cindy. As long as they are constructive I think negative comments add to the discussion.

[BlogAngelTeam (Joanna)]

I agree that you should include them not screen them - unless they're personal, offensive, insulting, defamatory about others etc... (which is why it's a good idea to have a comment policy worked out)

In my experience though 99% of comments are positive and constructive - much better to focus your energy on how to respond positively and constructively about those comments than worrying about the negative comments that might never come!

Joanna

[Denise aka The Blog Squad]

I agree with Joanna. Most blog comments are positive. And if you write about a subject that's not inherently controversial, you probably won't ever have to worry about this, yet so many people do, before they even start a blog.

If you focus on providing valuable, informative content, you'll probably be OK regarding comments.

[Di]

I take time to really pause and evaluate comments. Because my primary blog is directed towards a population that is viewed in a highly derogatory manner - fat people - I get four kinds of negative commenters:
1. Calling me out on errors
While not always worded kindly, these are valuable. It keeps me true to fact-checking and finding corroboration, and forces me to straighten out a fumble such as one case where I made incorrect assumptions about a poster in a different forum.

2. Subject disagreement
Usually these are harmless and worded neutrally - or simply with passion for the personal preference. These are excellent for inducing dialog.

3. Subject opposition
I let these sit for a while, because it's easy to just emotionally classify them as trolls when they're just challenging me in a way I need to be challenged. If the tone and approach is respectful, i.e. "I disagree with you, here's my perspective," I let them through. If it's not, I toss them in the spam pile.

3. Trolls
These are people who come on "concerned for our health" but who are really just out to get the "high" of being a jerk. The worst are easy to spot. Some masquerade as "fat people" and seem to think fat equates with semi-literate, so most end up in spam without me having to bother. There was one guy who started with "let's not all get defensive" and he got marked off as a troll for using that phrase to shut down dialog before it could begin.

[Mark Rae is building his website...]

I would like to add something to that:

First, understand the fear of most marketing and corp comm teams, they want to show the company in it’s best light, having a mar on it’s brand is a nasty blemish that don’t want to see, in the past, a counter press release or sweeping the issue under the carpet was an option, but no more with the rise of social media. So how can you help these folks?

Well the truth of the matter is, they are going to leave negative comments about your company elsewhere on the web, there’s no way you’ll ever be able to stop this. If you delete or remove the comments from your own corporate websites, it will probably escalate in a ‘louder’ location in blogs and other forums, so don’t do that.