How to deal with negative comments/reviews.

Everyone experiences negative comments in our offline-life, and anyone visible online, or with an online presence like a business or a school, is going to receive a degree of negative reviews and comments too.

Negative comments or reviews can come from anywhere, at any time, and are often unfounded or false. Whether it’s a comment on an Instagram picture, poking fun at the subject’s hair, or the photographer’s height, or if it’s a Google review that is the first thing anyone sees when they Google your school name - negative posts can be very damaging. Dealing with them incorrectly can sometimes be catastrophic. But, dealing with them can have a restorative effect, and you could even gain a fan, if you deal with it well. But how do you deal with negativity online? There’s no definite answer to this, there’s no right or wrong, definitely do or definitely don’t do. How you respond is subjective. The rest of this article is based on how we deal with negativity online - and what we recommend to schools that come to us to ask how best they should deal with online negative reviews/comments. So, without further ado, let’s get into it…

Here’s some tips as to how you should deal with a negative review or comment:

1. Face the hate.

It sounds obvious, but deal with the comment, or address the negative review. You can be sure that people’s attention will be drawn to a negative comment/review - so use that attention to show how you care about your audience and that you want to solve the problem that has been raised. Encourage a dialogue ‘off feed’. Invite them to speak with you privately, whether that’s at the school or in the DMs. Make it personal, don’t be tempted to use a generic ‘we take all complaints to heart, please get in touch with us directly to talk about your issue.’ Instead write a response befitting a professional outfit, one with integrity and a genuine desire to rectify the problem. Try this:

‘Hi Sarah, my name is Edward and I’m a Director at Company Ten. Firstly, thank you for highlighting the problem here - we’re conscious that we don’t always get it right. I was very sorry to read that our video editors were not able to meet your request of capturing the Sasquatch that visits your school’s playground at night. My understanding, from the conversations with the videographers that were present, their attempts over the two nights to film the creature, did not result in any useable footage. I would very much like to discuss this matter further with you, so please call me on 02273948783. I’m very sorry that we haven’t been able to meet your expectation in this instance, I sincerely hope that we’re able to rectify the issue for you. In the meantime I look forward to your call and wish you and yours a very Happy Christmas.’

Do be careful though, any hint of arrogance, being condescending, or flippant will be seen as antagonistic, and you will quickly lose the favour of your audience. The review or comment may be unfounded, completely false, and possibly ridiculous - but still broach the complaint in the same way that you would if that person were to come to your school office, sit down, and raise that complaint to your face. You’d handle it in a polite and professional manner wouldn’t you? You need to do the same online. Speak to the person, find out how you can make it right, apologies, and then make it right.

2. Deal with the underlying issue.

Sometimes it’s not just a single complaint or negative review that we receive but a barrage of abuse from a one or more repeat offenders. This behaviour should normally be dealt with in the same way as above - politely, calmly, and with a genuine want to resolve the issue. However, sometimes there is no issue to be resolved, instead the troll just wants attention and to get a reaction. In this situation, there are a couple of options that you may want to take:

• Ignore

• Block

• Engage

• Turn off commenting

If you ignore it, then they will soon loose interest and go elsewhere, but the negative reviews and comments go unanswered on your page/account - which might have the appearance of shying away from a hot-topic. Blocking will usually delete negative comments from your page or wall, however this will likely result in aggressive action from the troll which can sometimes escalate the situation. Alternatively you can engage with the abuse, but you run the risk of making the situation worse by feeding it. A go to answer for a lot of schools is to turn off comments all together - which, in my opinion, defeats the point of social media all together.

Social media encourages social interaction, where we can freely broach subjects and voice opinions from behind the safety of a keyboard and several hundred miles of cabling. With this freedom, and the soap box from which we can express ourselves, often without reproach, no person, industry, group, community or business is immune to trolling.

3. Encourage positive reviews.

If you are able to address the concern or complaint by a user, the likelihood is that their attitude towards the problem, and in turn your school, with change - and often they can become an advocate for your school’s positives. Remember this when dealing with a complaint or a negative comment. If you genuinely try and resolve the issue, you are not only losing a nay-sayer but you’re gaining a yay-sayer. And these are very useful.

Once you are in communication with the commenter (and remember to do this away from your social media), you should be able to win them over and convert them into a fan. Once you’ve resolved their problem, you could even ask them to delete or change the comment or review that they left. This is particularly useful when they’ve left a negative Google review.

Ask happy pupils and parents to leave reviews of your school. It sounds trivial, but when you consider how damaging a negative review can be, you realise how valuable a positive review can be also. Genuine and detailed reviews help to build trust in your brand/school. If a parents praises you on social media, get in touch and ask if they would mind leaving a Google review as well. Explain that you appreciate their positive review and that you would love for more people to see their opinion or read about their experience with your school.

For further reading, here’s a really good article about how to deal with negative comments on your social media.

As always, if you’ve got any questions about what we’ve said in this article, or want to know more about how to deal with negativity online, then get in touch - we love helping schools and teachers improve their relationship with social media and digital.

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Company Ten helps schools all across the United Kingdom do digital marketing better. From video production and photography to social media management and training, and a lot of things in-between - we are specialists in helping schools use ‘digital’ to their advantage. We’re not just flogging our services either, we actually want to help! So that’s why we offer free monthly training in digital marketing - to help you and your school improve and do better. We want you to be able to utilise everything that the world of digital marketing in education has to offer.