Should I avoid social media out of fear of negative reviews?

Social media continues to grow in popularity every day. Facebook has more than 400 million active users, and as Zack pointed out in a previous blog post, Twitter has surpassed the billionth tweet. More and more people are seeing the benefits of social media. They’re using the likes of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Digg, Reddit and much more to spread the word about who they are. However, there are some business owners who have yet to get into social media, and for many of them, there is a specific reason why they’re avoiding it. They fear the possibility of negative reviews.

This is an understandable fear. With an open forum that these social media outlets offer there is ample opportunity for negative reviews. One might think that an ethical and well-run company has nothing to fear, but no matter how excellent you might be there is usually someone out there who is hard to please (or will never be pleased). You know the guy. He goes into a restaurant prepared to give the waiters and waitresses a hard time about the food before he even knows what to order. Nevertheless, here a few reasons why you shouldn’t fear social media, or more specifically, negative reviews on social media:

1) You can address negative comments: Social media gives you the opportunity to demonstrate to a wide audience your customer service ability. If you’ve properly addressed the situation and the person continues to write negative things then others will notice how you handle situations and admire your efforts, rather than give credence to the complainer.

2) You can delete negative comments: On YouTube, Facebook and your blog you can approve or disapprove comments. Sometimes you might not want to delete all “negative” posts because, like #1 points out, you have the ability to address concerns and prove how responsive you are. Even the most ethical companies get complaints, so don’t hide everything. Pick and choose which non-complimentary comments you’d like to not delete and answer them appropriately.

3) You can overpower negative reviews: The website that has been the source of the most resentment most recently has been Yelp. I wrote an article a while back titled ‘Should I trust Yelp?’. There is still a lot of controversy surrounding Yelp, and because of that many people are fearful of setting up an account with Yelp. We know you can’t delete or even address Yelp concerns on your review page; therefore, the solution should be to push down the Yelp results in the search engine rankings. How do you do this? By utilizing multiple types of social media! Think about it, if someone specifically “googles” your business (possibly fishing for reviews) they should get a Google local business listing, your website, your blog, your Facebook Fan page, your Twitter account, your LinkedIn account, your YouTube channel, press releases and articles ALL LISTED BEFORE THE YELP REVIEW. I understand that this is a temporary band-aid on a bigger issue, but if you can push the Yelp listing off of page 1 it is much less likely someone will look at your Yelp listing. Then again, maybe you have nothing but great reviews on Yelp. In that case you would simply want to market your Yelp account more on all forms of social media, to draw attention to it.

If you run an ethical and professional business then you should never worry about getting into social media out of fear that someone might write a bad review. The best advice I can give you is to take advantage of all forms of social media to give you more than one voice to discuss your business and, if needed, challenge or address bad reviews. Give incentives to your clients to write good reviews of your business on your Google local business listing, your Yelp account and any other review sites geared toward your industry. Offer discounts or coupons off of future services for people that write reviews. There’s nothing to be afraid of with social media. In the long run it will only reveal the true character of your business.

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About The Author:  Tom Sullivan is the senior account executive at Turbo Social Media. He has managed accounts for a wide variety of businesses, from small “Mom and Pop” businesses to multi-million dollar corporations. His success in business stems from his entrepreneurial drive and his desire to do “whatever it takes” for his clients to be successful. Tom received his BA in Business Management Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former collegiate rugby player and he enjoys playing softball, golfing, camping, and snowboarding in his spare time.

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Related posts:

1. Google Places Stripping Out Non-Google Reviews
2. Should I Trust Yelp?
3. Social Media Spam & How to Avoid It
4. Best review websites of 2010