Category Archives: Coaching

by | September 14, 2015 · 9:58 am

Mining Gems From The Business Plan

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

Successful marketing takes either cash or a “cash equivalent.” A “cash equivalent” is what you use instead of cash. That could be time that you barter, but more often than not, it’s old-fashioned elbow grease. Marketing requires time, and it also requires some money. If you have more time, you can save money. If you have less time, you can get the same work done by hiring help. One way or another, good marketing is going to cost you.

I’ve heard business owners say that they had such a great location or product that they could “do business by accident.” And I’ve driven past their location when it went up for sale after they went out of business. Success happens because of hard work, strategy and yes, a little “optimized luck.” It doesn’t happen by accident.

What do I mean by “optimized luck?” “Optimized luck” is what happens when you’ve done your homework, worked as hard as you can, and a great opportunity opens up in front of you. If you hadn’t prepared yourself, you wouldn’t be ready to make the most of the opportunity, or you might not even notice it. But you also didn’t just get lucky. You prepared and trained so that you’d recognize luck when it showed up and so you would be ready to maximize your big break. It’s definitely not “doing business by accident.” For doing some smart business, we recommend to check this Paystubs.net tools.

Make a list of your prioritized goals/target audiences/current marketing actions. If you’ve made a table, add another column for “cost.” Write down what you think your current marketing actions are costing you to reach that target audience and achieve that goal is costing you. The cost could be in time, or it could be in real money. It could be the cost of hiring someone to update your web site or design your brochure, or it could include printing, postage, advertising or other fees. You could include membership dues for the groups you’ve joined to mingle with your target audience. Make the best estimates you can and then look at the results.

Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

  • How much are you currently spending for each goal?
  • Are you spending the most to achieve your top goal?
  • Is what you’re spending worth the potential new revenue that goal could provide?
  • Could you spend more if it would achieve your goal faster?

You may see some opportunities to make a few course corrections. If you are spending more to achieve your third priority than you are for your top priority, you’ve got a problem. If you’re spending more to achieve a goal with smaller revenue potential than for a goal with larger revenue potential, it’s time to reconsider. If you’re not spending anything, hoping to “do business by accident,” then you’re on thin ice.

Social media is “free” in terms of not costing money to sign up for sites like Facebook and Twitter, but it’s certainly not “free” in terms of the time it takes to put a social media marketing strategy into action. You won’t “do business by accident” just because you slap together a Facebook page or set up a Twitter account. If you don’t have time, you’ll need the cash to hire someone who can put the time into it for you. And if you have the time to put your social media marketing strategy into action, you’ll still need some cash to bring all the pieces of your marketing plan together so that your marketing works harder than ever to achieve your goals.

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by | September 10, 2015 · 9:02 am

Social Media Touch Strategy

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

Where does social media come in? Social media offers a conversational, low-pressure way to remain in the forefront of a prospect’s awareness with “touches” on a subject where there’s interest but no trigger for an immediate purchase. It can also keep your company in touch with current customers so that when add-ons or upgrades become necessary, you’re first in line for the business.

The key here is not to view social media as a way to provide a barrage of “buy now” messages. Instead, think of how you can engage the prospect in a conversation about whatever product or service you sell, with the immediate focus on offering helpful information related to the Problem/Pain/Fear.

Some great examples of this are tips, how-to videos, short audios, links to interesting resources like articles, white papers, blog posts or longer videos, interviews and Question/Answer sessions. Social media sites like Facebook make it easy for you to share multi-media content and have a two-way conversation about the topic in a format that reveals your company’s personality and lets you share your Real Story in a no-pressure environment. Twitter is a great way to provide tips, ask questions, share links to related resources, comment on headlines related to your product or service and even do surveys.

While you usually can’t close a sale before the customer has experienced a trigger point, once you’ve established a relationship, you have the chance to educate the prospect about that trigger point. Perhaps the best time to buy a new piece of equipment isn’t when the old equipment falls apart. Perhaps there are trade-in advantages or depreciation advantages to buying on a shorter purchase cycle. Maybe you can point out benefits that deal so much better with the Problem/Pain/Fear than the old product that the prospect decides to buy sooner rather than later. You’ve altered the trigger point through education, and because your company provided the information in an ongoing relationship, you’re likely to be first in line to get the sale.

When someone subscribes to your blog, Facebook page update, Twitter feed, they’re agreeing to get updates (information) from you on a regular basis. If you share information that speaks to his or her needs, every update does double duty; it reminds the prospect about you (a touch) while it provides useful information (deepening your relationship). Social media makes it easier and less expensive (and less intrusive) than ever before to stay in contact as touches prepare for a trigger.

Using a “touch” strategy keeps you visible by providing useful information your targeted audience wants and needs without sales pressure. What content can you offer to provide 30 valuable touches?

 

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by | September 8, 2015 · 9:01 am

Touches to Transactions

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

Modern marketing wisdom holds that in today’s advertising-saturated world, it takes at least seven to 30 “touches” or reminders before a consumer takes action. Although that may seem like a lot when you first hear it, if you think about how you act when you’re the consumer, it begins to make sense.

Your social media sites can account for several of those 30 touches. But to be effective, you need to think about how touches become transactions.

Touches and trigger points

We manage to ignore tens of thousands of advertising messages every day, mostly because they promote products we aren’t currently interested in buying. The key phrase there is “currently.” When you realize you need a product or service, all of a sudden, you tune into the messages related to the product/service that you had been screening out.

The situation that changes everything is a trigger point. It’s an event that moves you from someone who hasn’t thought about making a purchase or who has been casually window shopping to someone who needs to buy right now. The seller usually can’t change the trigger point (although they try to influence it with sales and specials), but you can make sure you’re making enough touches so that when a triggering event moves a prospect from looker to buyer, he or she thinks about your company.

Let’s use a car purchase as an example. If your car is reasonably new and in good working order, you may not be thinking at all about buying a new car. You probably tune out car ads, emails from dealerships, or radio commercials about great specials. Or maybe you’ve been thinking about buying a new car—sometime. You might be casually reading car ads, going out to dealer web sites, paying some attention to commercials, even slowing down when you pass the dealer’s lot for a good look. But for now, it’s all still window shopping.

Then a triggering event occurs. Your existing car is in an accident, and it will cost more to fix it than it’s worth. All of a sudden, you’re in the market for a new car, and you need it right now.

Until that triggering event happened, there wasn’t much the car dealers could do to hurry up your purchase. You bought the car based on your schedule of when you needed one, not on the dealer’s schedule of when he wanted to sell one. Business owners often forget that it’s the customers’ need that drives the purchase cycle more than it is driven by sales and specials. But there’s a very important thing to remember: When a customer moves from shopper to buyer, the company that has made the most marketing touches is first in line to get his business.

Go back to the car example. When that prospect was window shopping, the dealership with the best web site, or the showroom that was polite about a test drive without a commitment is likely to be the first place that prospect goes when he or she moves from shopper to buyer. Those “touches” pay off in top of mind awareness.

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by | September 1, 2015 · 9:27 am

News or Social Media?

by Gail Z. Martin excerpted from 30 Days to Social Media Success

            Should you send out your press release to news sites or post it on social media? The answer is: both. Social media is just a new vehicle for the oldest form of news—word of mouth. The difference lies in the style of the communication and the relationship with the audience.

Although their influence has waned, traditional news outlets remain important for publicity-seekers. But where it used to require mailing, emailing or calling a reporter, now it’s possible to find a reporter’s social media sites and strike up a conversation in a less formal and more accessible setting. Reporters and TV/radio hosts now blog, Tweet and post Facebook pages, all of which make it possible to comment or connect outside of traditional channels. The key difference is that connections made via social media should be conversational, while the real pitch should be made via traditional channels such as email or phone.

Today’s corporate press pages often include blogs, Twitter feeds, YouTube videos and web audio, and offer reporters the chance to subscribe via an RSS feed. You can create a similar one-stop media (and consumer) page on your web site and incorporate your social media sites to provide a content-rich introduction to you and your products or services.

Online press distribution sites (whether they are pay-for-placement or free posting) are a great way to increase traffic to both your web site and your social media sites. The last paragraph of a press release is called the “boilerplate;” it’s copy that stays the same from release to release and it includes a brief company description and your contact information. When you write releases that are designed to catch the interest of both reporters and consumers, you can steer them to visit your other sites for more information or for immediate sales. Press releases that you post online do two very valuable things: they increase your brand’s search engine visibility and they improve your site’s rankings through increased traffic and in-bound links.

The biggest difference between news and social media is in the context and style of the communication. Most newspapers and magazines (whether online or traditional paper) write in a third-person narrative form. This is ideal for the traditional press release. Social media sites, however, are conversation and informal. As a general rule, bloggers and social media site owners don’t appreciate getting press releases. They would rather be approached with a personal email or a direct message and a conversational inquiry to see whether the topic would be of interest. News sites tend to cover events, products and announcements in a detached, impersonal style, which is ideally as unbiased as possible. Social media sites revel in their quirky personality and imbue everything with the voice and perspective of the site owner. Traditional news sites also tend to show more restraint in terms of emotion and avoid the use of profanity. Social media sites are wide-open forums that can range from restrained to no-holds-barred.

When a story, image or video goes “viral” it means that it so captures the imagination that people begin to send it to their friends without prompting. Sometimes, a viral story or image will also make it only the traditional news if it gains enough popularity. It’s important to remember that all PR, viral or not, occurs with a complete lack of control on the part of the originator after the “send” button has been pressed. You may not like what a reporter or blogger says about your company or your product, and you may not approve of the contexts in which your viral image or story is relayed. Too bad. That’s how the game is played.

Leveraging PR and social media

When you use traditional PR and social media to reinforce each other, utilizing the unique strengths of both vehicles, your publicity can take a huge step forward.

Before you pitch a reporter, check out his or her social media sites. Make thoughtful comments that include a good signature block and reference your company/product/book in a non-sales way. If there are a few key reporters you want to target, you can begin this process long before your release is ready to go live.

Create a blog just for your press releases, and use RSS to feed it to your web site and social media pages so that your news is both easily updated and archived. A news blog also provides the option for interested reporters or citizen journalists to subscribe for future updates. Remember to include your videos and audios as well as your standard press releases.

When you post a press release to an online distribution site, make sure the headlines and copy are keyword-rich for optimum searchability, and have good links to your web site and social media pages. Take readers directly to the appropriate page for the topic, not just to the home page of your site. Don’t forget to fill in the “tags” section where you can increase searchability even further. When your press release posts online, be sure to add it to the Social Bookmarking sites for increased visibility.

When you have an article, radio interview or guest blog posted online, Tweet the link and let your Facebook and LinkedIn friends know by updating your “status” line. Blog about the experience of being interviewed, or augment the article or interview with additional information you didn’t have a chance to share and be sure to include the link. Add the link to your online press kit with a tag that shows the name of the publication/blog/station and the date. Be sure to submit article/interview links to the Social Bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon, too.

Create news by blogging live from industry events and creating on-site videos and uploading them. Run polls or surveys on your social media sites, and report the results with a press release to traditional and online news sites. Friend and follow the reporters and bloggers you hope to pitch, and pay attention to the kinds of topics they discuss and cover on their social media sites as well as in their articles, shows or blogs. Become part of the news by launching your own newsworthy podcast or blog and post solid, non-sales content that attracts the attention of traditional and online media.

While the lines between news and social media have blurred, consumers benefit from a windfall of information, while companies seeking publicity have more opportunities than ever before. Social media can not only increase the effectiveness of your publicity; it can create a powerful, interconnected and global PR platform for you and your business. Remember to entertain and inform and keep the focus of releases on “what’s in it for the reader” to get maximum impact.

 

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by | January 26, 2015 · 5:07 pm

Blogging and LinkedIn for Professionals

By Gail Z. Martin, author of 30 Days to Social Media Success

Looking for more professional visibility and a more prominent professional platform, with a way to connect with a steady stream of potential new clients?

Time to take a second look at blogging and LinkedIn.

I want to show you how blogging and LinkedIn can enhance your professional visibility and build a strong professional platform, which can produce a steady stream of qualified prospective customers. But before I get to that part, let me knock a few misconceptions out of the park so they don’t get in the way.

Out with the Old

Misconception #1: My type of clients aren’t on the Internet.

Answer: Unless they’re dead, incarcerated or incapacitated, they are on the Internet. According to a 2014 study by the Pew Research Internet Project, 87% of Americans use the Internet. And no, they’re not all teens. The report says that 93% of adults ages 30 – 49 are Internet users, 88% of those 50-64, and 57% of those ages 65+. Usage increases with education level and income, so 97% of those with a college education are online, as are 99% of those earning over $75,000. (Details here: https://www.pewinternet.org/data-trend/internet-use/latest-stats/)

Misconception #2: I can’t be on the Internet because I can’t give free advice.

Answer: What’s free advice got to do with it? You have a phone, and you don’t give free advice over it. You have a mailbox and you don’t give free advice. The Internet is a communication tool. You choose what you communicate.

Misconception #3: I prefer to get warm referrals from clients.

Answer: Who doesn’t? But are you getting enough of those warm referrals to pay your bills? If you could use some more business, increasing your professional visibility and creating a solid professional expert platform goes a long way toward bringing in new paying customers.

Misconception #4: Internet referrals wouldn’t be as high quality.

Answer: Professionals advertise in magazines, on billboards and bus boards, in newspapers, on TV and on the radio. The general public sees those ads. In contrast, online readers must possess expensive technology in the form of a smart phone, tablet/laptop/desktop computer and Internet connection—a form of filtering you don’t get in other types of advertising.

In with the New

Now that we’ve gotten those misconceptions out of the way, let me tell you what social media—in particular, blogging and LinkedIn–can do for you.

Let’s start with blogging. Blogging is like a cross between a newsletter and a website. It’s like a newsletter because you can easily update it with text and photos without needing a programmer to make the changes. It’s like a website because it’s on the Internet and searchable by Google and other search engines.

Most blogging platforms are free, although you’ll want to check the terms and conditions to make sure the site accepts commercial content. WordPress is popular because it’s easy to use, free to use, and doesn’t have restrictions on commercial usage.

What do you do on a blog? You educate. And by educating, you show yourself to be an expert. Readers come to like your voice and trust your wisdom. They may even share links to your blog posts with their friends (referrals) and when the time comes to hire someone, you’ll be first in line because you’ve created a relationship.

Isn’t educating the same as free advice? No! Educating means talking in generalities about topics related to your profession, sharing links to research studies and news of interest to your audience, reflecting on the general impact of new technology, trends and other issues. Have you ever given a talk to a local Chamber of Commerce or community group about your specialty? If so, then you’ve created the kind of content that is perfect for a blog—useful information that is not revealing confidential information or commenting on an individual’s situation. In fact, if you’ve given a lot of those kinds of talks, you can re-use your old speeches for blog posts and save yourself some time.

What about the comment section? Won’t people ask questions you can’t/don’t want to answer? Well, does that ever happen to you when you’re out in public or at a social occasion? How do you handle it then? See, you already know what to do. I would suggest having a permanent header and/or footer disclaimer on your blog making it clear that you cannot comment on individual situations, are not dispensing individual advice, etc. Then if someone oversteps, politely but firmly point them to the rules and go on with what you were discussing.

What do you talk about? Start with the types of general questions you get most often. These will seem basic to you, but if people already knew the answers, they wouldn’t keep asking. Depending on your type of xpertise, these Frequently Asked Questions are pretty general. Think education, not advice. Readers will self-filter as they read through the information to determine whether or not they need your area of expertise.

What about referrals? How long do you have to blog before you start getting new business? I recommend clients view blogging the same way they view membership/attendance at community organizations and the Chamber of Commerce. You might get lucky and get a new client or a hot prospect the first time you attend a meeting, but more than likely, it will take several months for people to get to know you or to have a life event that requires your services. Blogging isn’t a magic bullet, but neither are the other types of real-world relationship-building/meet-new-people events you are already doing. It’s one more power tool in your toolbox.

Worried that you’re going to get prospects from outside your practice area? Don’t be. After all, you have a phone but you aren’t getting swamped with long-distance calls from China. Make your practice specialties and coverage area clear on your “About Me” page, and that should avoid the issue.

There are a lot more visibility strategies I share with professional clients about blogging, but in the interest of covering ground quickly, it’s time to move on to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn is the most powerful professional networking tool on the Internet. It’s not a site where you go to meet new people; instead, it’s the perfect way to keep your network of connections warm and updated, so you can be more valuable to each other.

Have you ever needed an introduction to someone or a piece of information and you know the perfect person to ask, but it’s awkward because you haven’t spoken to that person in a couple of years? LinkedIn solves that problem, because the site makes it easy to get a constant stream of updates about all the people you list as Connections, so you can congratulate them on promotions or awards, comment on their professional news, and keep your name top of mind in a warm, friendly way.

LinkedIn is also a great way to generate warm introductions to people you need to meet. Suppose there is someone in the business community you’ve wanted to meet but whom you don’t know. LinkedIn will tell you whether that person is known by any of the people you’ve accepted as Connections. Now it’s simple to ask the person you already know and whom you’re connected to on LinkedIn for a warm introduction to the person they know and you want to meet. You do this all the time in real life, but offline, you don’t always know who knows whom. LinkedIn may surprise you by showing that the people you want to meet are closer than “six degrees of separation”!

LinkedIn groups are a great way to join or start a forum to discuss professional topics. (Again, in an educational sense, not advising.) It’s no different from showing up to a lecture or professional association meeting on a topic except that you don’t have to drive, park and waste an afternoon or evening in a drafty hotel ballroom. Not only can LinkedIn groups be a great way to meet professionals related to your field, they can also be a source of referrals as people get to know/like/trust the expertise you show through your posts and responses.

I recommend to clients that they not accept anyone as a LinkedIn Connection whom they do not know well enough to meet for coffee and refer to colleagues. The quality of your LinkedIn networking lies in deepening existing relationships and keeping those relationships warm. Not only that, but your Connections can see who else you are connected to. They can also ask you for a warm introduction. You wouldn’t be comfortable introducing a total stranger to a trusted colleague, or asking a stranger for an introduction. That’s why you want to make sure you know the people with whom you connect well enough to share that kind of information.

Don’t feel pressured to have a huge number of Connections on LinkedIn. Remember: quality counts more than quantity. Your network of trusted colleagues with whom you have built warm reciprocal relationships is much more powerful than a hodgepodge of total strangers.

Once again, this brief overview can’t cover all of the relationship-building/referral strategies I suggest to clients who use LinkedIn. However, I do hope that what I’ve shared in this short introduction has changed the way you think about using the Internet as a tool to increase your professional visibility, extend your personal branding and expert platform, deepen your networking relationships and create a new referral stream.

Just remember—your ideal prospects are already using social media to find information and connect with professionals like yourself. If you’re not engaging them in a relationship-building conversation, odds are that your competition is.

Gail Z. Martin owns DreamSpinner Communications and consults with professionals and businesses in the U.S. and Canada on strategic social media. Gail has an MBA in marketing and over 25 years of corporate and non-profit experience at senior executive levels. She is the author of three bestselling books on new media marketing: 30 Days to Social Media Success, 30 Days to Online PR and Marketing Success and 30 Days to Virtual Productivity Success (Career Press). 30 Days to Social Media Success made TheWashingtonPost.com’s Top 5 Business books, was chosen by Fed-Ex Office and Office Max to be among a handful of books featured in-store, and has been mentioned in media including Inc., The Wall Street Journal, Worth, and Fox Business News. Find her online at www.DreamSpinnerCommunications.com, on Twitter @GailMartinPR and blogs at BigDreamsAndHardWork.com or on email: Gail@DreamSpinnerCommunications.com

 

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by | January 16, 2014 · 9:00 am

Online Reputation Basics: Manage Your Brand and Reputation in a Google World

You’ve created an online presence for yourself via your Web site, Facebook and LinkedIn pages, blog, Twitter feed and other Internet activity.  This presence becomes part of your personal and professional branding, which is why it’s so important that everything you post online is consistent with the professional image you want to project.  Yet at the same time, other people are free to tag you in photos, mention you in their blogs and Facebook posts, refer to your company and products in articles and reviews, or re-tweet your Twitter content.  You control what you post yourself, but how can you possibly track everything posted by others, including people you’ve never met?

Google Alerts is a first line of defense.  It’s a free tool that enables you to track keywords any time they show up on the Internet, and those keywords should include your name, company name and product names.  Any time your keywords are used, Google Alerts sends you a report which includes a link so you can see for yourself.  It’s not perfect; I’ve found it to work well for content on blogs and Web sites and less so for content on Facebook and other social media sites, but it still snags a tremendous amount of information and is useful as a basic reputation management tool.

SocialMention.com is also valuable as a reputation management tool.  Social Mention fills the holes left by Google Alerts by focusing specifically on social media, and covers an impressive variety of site types.  While no program will capture everything, Google Alerts and Social Mention used together should give you a very comprehensive picture of what the market is saying about you (and how much they’re talking about you).

If you’ve been online very long, you’ve discovered that lots of people have a name that is the same or very similar to yours (and perhaps to your company or products).  One way inaccurate information finds its way into the Internet data stream is via mistaken or confused identity.  Most of the time, these mistakes are honestly made, and can be cleared up with an email or a clarifying post.  If you find that you’re frequently being confused with a particular person or company, you may want to add a note in your Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) stating who you’re not.

People in the public eye (which includes prominent business people as well as writers, speakers, and educators) may sometimes be the victim of pranksters who set up unauthorized sites to detour legitimate Web traffic, make a negative statement, or just cause havoc.  This is especially easy to do in social media, and the result can be a site purporting to be written by you that is making statements you would never make, statements that could be damaging to your brand and reputation.

One way to assure that people are finding the real you is to use a site like Zoolit.com provides a landing page that shares all your sites: social media, Web sites, blogs, etc.  Using a landing page like Zoolit enables you to give readers a way to verify whether or not a site that purports to be from you is really yours.

Excerpted from 30 Days to Virtual Productivity Success by Gail Z. Martin

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by | January 9, 2014 · 9:00 am

Online Reputation Protection: 4 Reasons to Care What Google Says About Your Business

Productivity takes a hit if you have to spend time cleaning up a mess.  The bigger the mess, the more time gets wasted on clean-up.  Needless to say, preventing or containing messes can boost productivity and give you peace of mind, which enables you to keep your focus on your top priorities.

That’s why it’s so important to know what’s being said about you and your company online, and who’s saying it.  “Reputation management” refers to being aware of what is being said about you online so that you can work to remove inaccurate or defamatory content, respond to legitimate complaints, and capture positive comments and testimonials.  The term can also refer to techniques to reduce the impact of unfavorable content via search engine optimization techniques.

Let’s be clear: If you’ve done something unethical or have shoddy business practices, you’re better off cleaning up your act and making restitution than trying to suppress legitimate negative comments.  If you have done a previous crime, learn how to get a mugshot removed from google. And as discussed in the chapter on online directories, other people have a right to their opinions and to speaking those opinions online. They aren’t required to like your products and they may say so publicly.  Reputation management should never be seen as a way to cover up bad business practices.

That said, it is important to understand how you and your company are viewed in the marketplace so that you can make course corrections as needed or reap the benefits of glowing reviews.  And, inevitably, incorrect information will make its way online, so it’s also important to have a way to become aware of erroneous content and straighten out misunderstandings.  We perform all of these tasks daily in the real world, without really thinking about it.  Reputation management is just the online equivalent of staying plugged into the grapevine to see what others are saying.

Excerpted from 30 Days to Virtual Productivity Success by Gail Z. Martin

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by | December 12, 2013 · 9:04 am

Online Reputation Management: 5 Ways to Protect Your Personal Brand and Manage Your Reputation

The idea of customers posting reviews for the world to see makes a lot of business owners nervous.  While they believe in the quality of their product and service, they fear that competitors or mean-spirited people may post unfair or inaccurate information online that could damage their business.  It’s certainly possible that, despite sterling quality, a disgruntled person might post a negative review.  However, according to Yelp’s own analytics, the vast majority of reviews posted are very positive.  Most people posting reviews want to alert readers to their favorites, not trash companies.

What if someone does post a negative review?  If you find a negative post online, take a deep breath and let yourself calm down, then read it again to see if there is any truth to the customer’s disappointment.  Business owners can post replies to reviews, but you should do so carefully and strategically to avoid making a bad situation worse.  If the customer had a bad experience, you can make a public apology, offer them a replacement, and try to make it right.  You may not sway the unhappy person’s opinion, but you’ve publicly demonstrated that you heard, you listened, and that you attempted to correct the situation.            Most consumers realize that mistakes happen; they just want to know that you care enough to fix it.  You may not win back the disgruntled consumer, but you’ll go a long way toward preventing one comment from souring the opinions of others.

If the comment is minor, saying nothing may be the best way to handle it.  If the customer didn’t like the seasoning in your soup, for example, you probably can’t change their opinion without changing your recipe.  People are entitled to their opinions, so if it’s a matter of taste and not quality, readers will probably take it for what it’s worth and make their own judgement.  By replying or trying to argue with the consumer, you just draw attention to the post, turning a minor comment into a major argument and making yourself look argumentative.

What if someone posts a really bad comment?  If the comment is abusive, uses vulgarities, racist language or profanity, it’s likely that you can appeal to the site owners to have the comment removed.  Many sites include internal filters to remove over-the-top comments or to push them far down in the results, making it less likely that an outrageous comment is seen.  It is also possible to contact the user who posted the comment and politely ask them to remove it.  If that doesn’t work, and the comment is truly both malicious and defamatory, it is possible to bring legal action for slander.  How far you take it depends on just how much damage you believe the comment can cause.  Another way to deal with negative comments is to ask your loyal customers to help you out by posting their own positive comments, which will push an unreasonable review so far down the queue that it will be seen by fewer people.  And, you can ask your friends to also request that a truly objectionable review be removed (sites may pay more attention to multiple user requests).

In my experience, companies worry far too much about the possibility of negative comments.  Does your company operate in an ethical manner?  Do you offer a quality product that lives up to your claims?  Do you strive for good customer service and follow through on  your promises?  If so, there should few reasons for your customers to say anything bad, and lots of cause for them to sing your praises.  Here’s something else to consider:  consumers have talked about businesses to their friends and neighbors since the beginning of commerce.  With today’s online directories, you now have a chance to hear what they’re saying, and if the comments to reveal areas for improvement, you can make the changes necessary to avoid future problems.  View comments as feedback, and recognize that it’s impossible to make everyone happy.  The positives of visibility and good user comments far outweigh the negatives.

Excerpted from 30 Days to Virtual Productivity Success by Gail Z. Martin

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