One of our clients was recently forced to respond to a personal attack on both him and his business by individuals using social media. His business is not of a type that you would expect to be reviewed on Yelp. He did respond at length to the first attack “review”. This did not end the problem and other negative posts followed. This, in turn, worsened the situation to the point at which he was told by a very likely prospect that he was taken out of consideration for a professional engagement because of these negative reviews on Yelp.
What would you do?
First and foremost it is really important for you to respond. If you don’t respond you create the impression that the negative comments may have some validity. The nature of your response is critical. It’s natural to feel attacked because that is indeed the case. If you respond in a way that can be considered in any way defensive it will only make the matter worse. It may even invite “piling on”. sem[c] has created a plan to improve the situation on Yelp in a positive way that will give the users of that service a more accurate and balanced view of the situation.
It’s a good practice to think of your response as an opportunity to educate the public about what you are doing. You are not going to change the mind of the poster. Especially if, as in the case of our client, the poster is completely mistaken about what your role is and is complaining that you did or didn’t do something that has nothing to do with you. The beauty of a social media success is that your clients can say what you did for them. This is a great way to allow prospects to discover the answer to the all-important question “What’s in it for me?” (W.I.I.F.M.) in a very understandable and relatable way.
You can be absolutely sure that your prospects and clients don’t think about what you do the same way you do. This being the case you need to talk to them in the way they think, not you. You really want to answer the W.I.I.F.M. question… but how? In order to do that successfully it is to your advantage to know how people use search to look for what you do. Figuring that out for you is an important part of what sem[c] offers you.
Getting you found for that by Google and other search engines is the rest of what we do. Call, email or click.