by Denise Giacin*

Flickr Image: striatic / hobvias sudoneighm

A couple weeks ago, in my quest to understand this global monster called social media, I wrote a piece on Fresh Ideas called, Social Media: The New Solitaire?. That post generated a lot of chatter over whether or not a company should allow employees to use social media. This week, I want to build off of it and discuss social media in regards to negativity. Is it possible that some corporations are afraid to use social media because of negative backlash and not because they are concerned with employees slacking off?

Sure, utilizing a social media platform for your company does make you more susceptible to negative comments, but shouldn’t the positive outweigh the negative? How about taking this idea a step further… what if you could show your customers how well you handle negativity by using social media to be proactive or to handle an issue if it does arise? Allow me to explain.

Last week I was patiently (okay, rather impatiently) waiting for my brand spanking new Droid X to arrive. I casually tweeted, “repetitively clicking on a shipment tracking number isn’t going to make it get here any faster #FedEx #whatilearnedtoday.” 

I didn’t mean for this to come across as negative. Although, I suppose if you’re FedEx you wouldn’t want me complaining about the speed of packages being delivered. To my complete shock I received a tweet back from @FedexLaShelia saying “@denise10283 This is Fed Ex LaShelia. Would you like my help?”

Hey, now this is service! I politely tweeted her back with a big thank you and explained I was just antsy.

BurrellesLuce also has similar social media practices in place. As a company, we will respond to blog, Twitter, and Facebook postings to name a few. We want to know what our customers are saying and choose to take an active role in responding to all inquiries – positive or negative. I can say from personal experience that every inquiry, I’ve responded to, we were able to resolve the issue and I was able to gain some valuable learning experience.

In my opinion, for that reason alone, I can say it is worth it to monitor and actively participate in social media, but you have to do both.  Every company would love to hear positive comments (who wouldn’t?) but I believe it’s the relationships you can salvage by paying particular attention to the negative comments that are the most important.

Does your company have a plan in place for dealing with negativity on social media? Do you have any tips you can share? 

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*Bio: Prior to joining the BurrellesLuce Client Service team in 2008, Denise worked in the marketing industry for three years. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from the University of Connecticut, where she gained experience interning in PR and working for student organizations. By engaging readers on the Fresh Ideas blog Denise hopes to further her understanding of client needs. In her spare time, she is passionate about Team in Training (The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society’s charity sports training program) and baking cupcakes. Her claim to fame: red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. LinkedIn: dgiacin Twitter: @denise10283 Facebook: BurrellesLuce

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 19th, 2010 at 8:42 am and is filed under Client Services, Public Relations, Social Media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.