GUEST POST: HOW TO CONVERT A NEGATIVE REVIEWER ON SOCIAL MEDIA INTO AN EVANGELIST FOR YOUR BUSINESS

Take it from me, social media marketing is the best marketing strategy that the world has ever seen. And investing in social media marketing is no longer an option as it has become the new industry standards for connecting with a target audience and building brands.

Social media has also given consumers so much power such that they can now turn to platforms like Facebook to view ratings, read reviews, comments from real clients and more.

And learning how to professionally handle reviews and negative comments is important as it can push away potential customers, and at worst case, can cause damaging effects to a company’s brand image.

In this article, you are going to learn how to correctly manage negative reviews and use them to win more customers.

Let me start by sharing what happened to me last week.

So a lady reacted to my Instagram posts with contradiction. She didn’t stop there, she entered my DM for the first time to rant about something she doesn't know much about. At first, I thought she was a female LASISI, later I realized she had some questions that my post did not answer.

According to her, I'm supposed to have millions of followers on Instagram since I claim to be so good at Instagram marketing and not 23,000 followers.

First thing, I checked her profile to analyze her brand and personality.

"God, what did I do to deserve this from a sister who cannot even use the free Instagram photo editing tools to cover up her healthy pimples?" I asked myself.

I told myself, "Calm down Henshaw Jacobson," explained to her that I had just 400 followers as at April 2017, but I had grown my personal Instagram page to over 23,000 followers. I didn’t hesitate to also thank her for reaching out to share her thoughts with me.

Next, she was sending me love emojis. I returned the emojis smiling like Goodluck Jonathan ( In my mind, the Beyonce before is now rushing me).😂

But guess what happened this week. She is back to my DM but with nice words this time and acting like I'm her new Malaysian based boyfriend. Before I knew it she has introduced my company, QliqMedia, to two friends.

Needless to say that we are good friends now.

Here's it!

If you are reading this, first you should always be prepared for negative reviews- they will always come. In fact, if you have 100 reviews and they are all positives, some potential customers may think that they are not real.

So expect a "Lasisielenu" in your comments, expect "Boko Haram" in your DM, expect a "Bobrisky" in your news feed. They are all for good.

Secondly, I want to say that a negative review is not bad. You learn more from positive reviews.

It could be that the customer did not read or understood the manual, didn't know how to pick the right one for their situations, etc. Reviews give you directions on what to do next. The solution here may be an explainer video.

So How Do You Handle Negative/Biased Reviews?

It can be frustrating. In this case, wait till you are calm or get a team member to respond because anger does not produce good results.

You have to respond as soon as possible though.

Here is the deal!

1- Get to know the root of the problem.

Once I was involved in creating a marketing strategy for a diaper product, i also worked with the team to execute the plan. Everything was going on fine until a mom had a terrible experience and announced it publicly.

We were shocked, shocked because we trusted our products and we never had any issues.

So we decided to find out what went wrong. After our investigation, we found out that her baby was supposed to wear the medium size of the diaper but she ignorantly bought large and because large is bigger it couldn’t hold the baby and that resulted in leakages.

What we did!

We apologized, replaced the large with medium size and that was how she became our brand evangelist.

You can do the same on social media.

2- Be Quick to respond

I often see people ignoring negative comments on social media.

No, don't add salt to your injury. Never Ignore or try to delete a negative comment. Who knows someone might have screenshot it. Be responsible and face your demon. Start with an apology and promise to fix the issue.

3- Fix the problem as soon as possible.

There is no better way to handle a negative social media review than solving the problem for the reviewer and making sure other customers do not have the same experience.

You might need to replace the faulty product, fix the broken parts or do an exchange.

However, in a case of false reviews. Chat with the person privately, you can take it offline if possible. Sort things out and request he takes down the negative review.

The goal is to make your customers and prospects happy and maintain a good brand image for your business.

Over to you.

How do you handle negative social media reviews and comments?

Henshaw Jacobson is a digital marketing professional and the founder of QliqMedia, a digital marketing agency on a mission to help businesses and individuals connect with their target audiences online and sell their products or services without hassle.

Before staring QliqMedia, Henshaw spent six years in a 

leadership position in sales and marketing, where he helped companies Including Mich Louis Nig Ltd achieve their marketing goals.
Today, Henshaw helps leaders and organizations gain visibility, grow influence and make money using creative marketing strategies and digital tools like social media.

You can connect with him on social media @henshawjacobson