Feb
10
2010

Can Negative Social Media Content Be Great?

Nearly every time I’m pitching a project that involves the utilization of blogs and social media, the issue of being able to screen content generated by users always arises.

The client will commonly ask questions like, “So what if someone has a bad experience with our product or dislikes our company and decides to Tweet something nasty? How will we be able to control what the universe sees? Who’ll be responsible for screening for inappropriate content?”

They’re all valid and reasonable concerns. I understand that most marketing and brand managers would like to avoid at all costs the possibility of portraying a negative brand image or poor customer experience to all those who see their Twitter or Facebook streams. These fears are why in 2009, Rockfish Labs created TidyTweet, a filtering application that prevents undesirable content, language and users from infiltrating and polluting social media marketing efforts.

I question though if in the long run it’s more damaging to censor negative feedback and comments than to take the opportunity to respond thoughtfully and strategically to them. If it’s more dangerous to become enamored with only half the story your customers are telling. If it’s an opportunity missed to see only the positives about your company and not the hard truth or the dissent.

Remember, social media is meant to be a two-way conversation. Obviously, it’s a tool to push out content and get the attention of the audiences you want to reach. But it’s also a mechanism for people who are taking the time to engage with your brand—even if it’s negative—to get your attention and be heard.

So what do you think? Negative comments are fully welcome here and via @tallskinnyguy on Twitter.

Photo courtesy of carolyntiry via Flickr Creative Commons.

So what do you think?

Can Negative Social Media Content Be Great?

  • http://www.lrci.com Matt

    If you block out all of that negative commentary, you remove the conflict that inspires those truly passionate about your brand or product to voice their opinions as well.

  • http://buildamovement.com Gary Bostwick

    Agreed, Lukens. Even if someone’s words shared via social media are negative, that person is doing more than what 80% of your audience is doing by actually interacting and engaging with others about your brand. Sometimes negative comments can spur a debate, which can in turn show who your true loyalists are. Those who are willing to defend your brand in your stead. And sometimes, the negative comments are well deserved and the best, smartest companies take those statements to heart and use them to improve whatever’s wrong. People complaining about customer service? Focus your attention there to find out what’s wrong. People think your new burger tastes like crap? Ask why, what don’t they like, improve the product to make it taste better.

  • http://tidytweet.com Michael Paladino

    Gary,

    I’m one of the developers of TidyTweet and wanted to first thank you for mentioning the product.

    Second, I completely agree with you that negative comments from users are great opportunities for a company to learn from their mistakes and fix those mistakes with that individual consumer. In addition to developing products like TidyTweet, we also do quite a bit of client work. In those cases where we recommend a client use TidyTweet, we ask them to consider leaving all feedback including negative comments in their feed. Some clients are progressive enough to take that advice while others prefer to hide the negative comments.

    TidyTweet’s strength is that we put the user in control and let them make their own decisions. There are also situations involving spam, hate speech, etc. where the content should never make it to the website. I know that falls a bit outside the scope of what you were discussing, but I just wanted to bring it up to give a more well-rounded view of TidyTweet.

    Thanks for the good read!

  • http://buildamovement.com Gary Bostwick

    Michael,
    Glad to meet virtually. And glad y’all down at Rockfish are enjoying our blog. You said, “TidyTweet’s strength is that we put the user in control and let them make their own decisions.” Just wondering, does the user have the ability to set varying levels of filtering, similar to when a user sets an email spam filter from low to high? Put another way, does the user get to determine what exactly constitutes negative content, or is there a pre-determined set of keywords built into TidyTweet’s functionality?

  • http://tidytweet.com Michael Paladino

    Gary, good to meet you as well a few months later. I know it's been a while since this posting, but I just happened back on your blog entry and noticed your comment.

    To answer your questions, we do have a pre-determined list of inappropriate words that the user can choose to opt-in to or not. This list is made up entirely of curse words, explicit sexual phrases, and hate speech. The user can also create their own custom lists of words to exclude, users to exclude, and can always manually approve or reject tweets if they require more control.

    Hope this helps explain some of the functionality. Let me know if you have any follow up questions. Thanks.