In my last consumerism related post (available here), I spoke about how to go about alerting fellow consumers to bad service or other inadequacies of a brand. In this post though, I’m going to speak on how companies can interact with bloggers so as to minimize the damage and to create a brand ambassador out of these angry bloggers.The Internet is a vast, unmonitored space where anyone and their grandmother can and will complain about your product. Here’s how to make sure they change their tune to something more positive. I’m going to harp on the same example of Stopcore.co.za here as it’s the most obviously aggressive example in recent memory.
The first step is to not give the angry bloggers a chance. Either strive for a decent product and customer service (yes SA companies, it is possible) or if you cannot do that then take some steps to avoid nasty domain names. A domain costs R50 a year so make sure you register “stop”, “sucks” and other negative derivatives of your name and an adjective. However, since you cannot control a personal blogging space, these are the rules to follow in those instances.
It’s important to remember that you cannot stop every single negative mention of your brand (you can for a smaller brand but bigger companies often have lots of complaints). What you can do is look for trends such as a site like Stopcore.co.za or a growing movement of angry twitter users. To track these mentions your easiest bet is to use Online Reputation Management tools like Brandseye or Trackur although it is possible to mash together a group of free tools to do this in a slightly less elegant but cheaper manner. The biggest failure (in South Africa) is that companies are “listening” but doing nothing about these complaints. If you follow the logic of listen, talk and execute (not the blogger) then you’ll be able to make changes if the complaints are valid and constructive.
It’s important to remember that blogging is relatively anonymous and bloggers online tend to not be the same person online that they are offline. What this also means is that Bloggers don’t think before they type but more importantly for your purposes, they tend to back down when confronted. It’s easy to stand on your soapbox and complain about a product but it’s a lot more difficult to make these comments to the product owner or ambassador.
This brings us to the plan of attack. You see, all bloggers want is interaction with regards to their complaints. What you need to remember though is how best to interact with these bloggers.
When RJ Van Spandonk from Core had a sarcastic tirade on Twitter about Stopcore.co.za and other unhappy blogggers, the tone was a simple “we don’t care at all”. Had RJ taken a moment to consider the issues of price and service and addressed these issues in a humble, deferent manner then it would have been likely that the entire site would have been pulled down assuming a decent explanation could be given. You’ve got to remember that these are your clients and they are cross with you or your service/product and at the end of the day, keeping a client is a much cheaper proposition than getting new clients. In no way should you ever be sarcastic or condescending online. This is what I like to call “a terrible idea”.
What RJ forgot is that the Internet remembers every mistake and between Google and the ease of taking a screen shot, it’s extremely easy to have that negative evidence forever. If you look at ORM from a strategic point of view, you would never want to fight the bloggers on their turf. Take the conversation offline where you are able to make sure all conversation is between only you and that complainant. As mentioned before, the average blogger/twitter user will back down when spoken to in real life and as such, you need to interact in a world you understand. Whether this interaction happens in a phone call or a face to face meeting is irrelevant but in my experience online complainants back down when you have a physical connection with them.
Bloggers are egotistical and just want to be heard. If you can interact with them in an understand manner and actually make any changes if their comments are legitimate then you’re well on your way to creating a brand ambassador that will talk about your product and do the job of marketing for you.
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