Managing positive, neutral, and negative comments on social media

by Andrew Chow, social media strategist

For entrepreneurs using social media for customer engagement, a response strategy map is a system of responses drawn up collectively by the entire organisation to dictate engagement with their target audience on social media.

Broadly speaking, a response strategy focuses on the responses to any comments made by the public. It is an action map created so that everyone in the taskforce knows what to do, how to respond, who to activate during a crisis, and how to close the conversation loop. It can be used for managing public relations and should be refined after every major media crisis.

Every company will have its individual response to inputs from users in the social media space. The template provided in this article can only serve as a guideline for your corporate response strategy.

Positive Comments

Positive comments may be few and far in between. People are more inclined to give negative feedback than positive ones, especially in a highly competitive country like Singapore. However, positive comments do come from authentic fans, but when it happens, it is a pity most brands do not know how to magnify the effect to the fullest.

Positive comments are usually overlooked, especially when they are just regular compliments. However, referrals, good testimonials, and success stories should not be ignored. Whenever such positive comments appear, share them on different platforms.

If you have positive comments originating from your Facebook page, share them on Twitter or your blog. If you can trace the fan’s Twitter account, do not forget to mention him in the conversation. If you are sharing on your blog, you can acknowledge the fan with a hyperlink back to his profile or simply do a screen capture. If there is a compliment for one of your staff’s service, share it on LinkedIn and encourage the staff to get connected with the fan. A good recommendation on LinkedIn may eventually happen because of the connection.

The entire company can be more motivated when staff reads about positive comments for different departments. So share them on your company newsletter. Compile the number of positive comments and their categories into your social media KPI. Your management will appreciate the numbers at the end of the year to justify the ROI on social media. If an existing fan refers someone new to the company, follow-up quickly through your normal sales channel and reward the referrer through your own customer incentive or reward system.

Neutral Comments

If comments are rather neutral, verify if the comments came from your fan. If the commenter is not a fan, encourage him to bring the discussion further and eventually encourage him to become a fan. In reality, everyone who is new to your company or brand and post on your platform is your potential prospect.

Negative Comments

If you received something negative, always give priority to manage those who came from your fans. Negative feedback usually involves service quality, damaged product, customer service, delayed delivery, long unanswered phone calls to helpdesk, wrong billing, and so on. Whatever the complaints may be, they usually involve at least one department. This is the reason why your page should have one representative from each department to look out for comments related to his work and address these concerns swiftly.