Thanks for your comment.

Timeliness in response is very important, so that any bad press can be detected quickly. Google Alerts for example can provide you with daily updates on mentions of your keyword.

It is advised that as time passes, you have a dedicated team supporting social media. Somewhat like how you have a Public Relations team or and Marketing Communication team. Social Media will require a dedicated resource as you do not only deal with your website, blog, facebook fanpage or twitter account. You have the entire web of information to look at, monitor and broadcast as and when it happens.

When you get bad press… It could be due to a couple of factors.

• Bad service rendered, inferior product and many other reasons.

The key here is that you get the feedback from the client. And you know where your business or organisation is failing to provide the best possible service or solution. Hence taking proper corrective actions and announcing it to the community.

• in the case where the client is unreasonable and acts undesirably on the social media channel that your organisation uses, your customer service officers can step in to help pacify the disgruntled customer in full view of the community on your platform.

here you kill 2 birds with one stone, you help pacify this client, prospects seeing your proactive actions will be more convinced about the organisation as an organisation that aims to resolve all disputes amicably.

In the case of a government agency, you may be at a brunt of bad press due to an unpopular policy and you get flogged by a group of unhappy Singaporean banging away at their keyboards at home.

Using social media, you can take part in the conversation and possibly the ranting that may be going on. Explaining the rationale behind this “unpopular” policy. Of course if you cannot convince them, you can bring it up for review in the near future and following which make adjustments to make it better.

In all forms of social media, when you receive bad press, the key is not to take criticisms negatively, engage in conversation with the person/people propagating the bad press to find an amicable solution. If it really cannot be found due to an unreasonable customer, and the subject that this person talks about that is totally baseless and uninformed, your supporters are likely to “come to your rescue”.

Thank you again for your comment, i will be contacting you via email with my contact details so feel free to continue this conversation here, or via email.

Do read the other related articles and let me know what you think.

What if it is a situation in which nothing can be done to address the concerns/complaints (afterall, there are situations in which customers are just unreasonable) or it can’t be addressed in a very short time?

How do you ensure / get the buy-in of your organisation to support social media esp. if it’s a government agency (afterall, they are the ones who are most susceptible) to bad press?

Social media presents itself in many ways… at the end of the day, it is user generated content… thus a democratisation of media….

Food sites like HGW and W2E are gathering places for people to form special interest communities. Driven by the belief that majority opinions can’t be wrong, people tend to use these opinions to assist in their own opinions. It’s an old, old sales idea rebooted — “A million satisfied customers can’t be wrong!” But does this really make it “social media”? Or just an aggregation of feedback?

Social media venues are dynamic communities. Living organisms, literally. And managing social media marketing in this environment takes a lot of time and effort to nurture….

And with what you said about social media offering nothing else but a channel of communication, that … Read moreisn’t entirely true. For example, in Nick’s note, he mentioned sites like HungryGoWhere and Wat2Eat, and people actually visit such sites because they want to read reviews of a particular restaurant, they want to learn about the dining experience and quality of food. Such information cannot be found with the “traditional ‘Click here to contact us’ button on a website.”

Social media is not here to replace traditional media, it is just utilising the space-less arena to create a new form of public sphere for in-depth social interaction, community formation, and the tackling of collaborative projects.

In response to your earlier post, as much as social media is a “Next Big Thing”… We cannot and should not… downplay or ignore traditional/industrial media. Everyone has his/her own preference to the type of media they are most comfortable with. A radio/newspaper combo to generate the interest… from there a call to action to follow the progress on facebook, a blog or even a virtual showroom in Second Life… followed by an actual launch event.

Every good marketing guy knows this is what makes or breaks a successful campaign. Chosing the right media, though, is a little more tricky.

Take car ads for example. You see them on TV, radio and newspapers. TV lets you see the car and drool over it. Call to action? Almost none. It’s usually after hours that the ad gets seen, and it gets forgotten by morning. Run it over the radio from 8:00-9:00 in the morning and you’ll get a whole lot of people who’re actually at the wheel, experiencing their old/crappy/unsatisfying cars. Purchase influence? Potentially good. Newspaper ad. Big picture, big phone number. Call to action is right there.

A few questions arise: 1) Which media combo would you pick for optimum cost effectiveness? 2) What role does the Internet play in this whole process? 3) Can social media marketing work here, and if it can, in what way?

For my money, I’d run with the radio/newspaper combo. Assuming I had a good ad, I’d put it on the morning radio show, plug the … Read moreheck out of it, then hit the guy in the face with a big call to action in the papers when he hits the office. He *will* make that trip to the car showroom at lunchtime.

In the meanwhile, though, he’s going to use the Internet to find out more about the car being advertised. This is where he does his research. This is where you cash in on his weakness. Mail this postcard out to your friends. Use this as your IM avatar. Be our fan on Facebook. Make friends with like-minded people. GOSSIP ABOUT US! Get my drift?

Social media is not the revolution you’ve defined. It’s driven by people, but it’s not about people power. Yes, sure it can be a good soapbox for some, but more than that, it’s part and parcel of a much larger marketing mix. The Internet only influences part of our lives, not all of it. Just like you need all your faculties to gain a proper perception of the world. Lose your hearing or your sight and your perception is seriously handicapped.

Lloyd Salmons of the IAB Social Media Council puts it across very well: “Social media isn’t just about big networks like Facebook and MySpace, it’s about brands having conversations.”

Conversations. That’s something that none of the other traditional media are fully capable of. You don’t want to make your pitch here online. No. Not when I can turn you off with a click of a button, or pre-empt you with an ad blocker. Social media marketing is not about publishing, or the sale, or feedback. It’s about building a brand.

Many more “garage bands” now are getting heard through platforms like MySpace when just recording a demo tape and sending it over to a club for an Open Mic night or to music labels couldn’t get them anywhere.

Putting yourself up using social media and getting “flogged”. By handling the issue and responding to feedback in real time helps you to maintain credibility and at the same time show that you, as part of the organisation, are pro-active in making sure that all ends are covered. Bad Press is only bad when bad comments and feedback are not acted upon and swept under the carpet……

So I do not think that it is a Pandora’s Box…

With “social media” what … Read moreis my chance of being discovered if I am but a single face in a crowd of millions? A single voice drowned by the cacophony of millions of others doing the same? I’d be better off with “social networking,” slowly working my way closer to the right people in the right places.

Whether or not there is censorship with traditional and/or big-business media owners is not the point. Worded rightly and politely, any point can be made. But I’ll put forward my question again — what is the real difference? Both are channels through which ideas, opinions and feedback may be aired. Both offer publicity to a greater or lesser degree…

But it is the more traditional channel that offers the most opportunity for a person to be seen/heard/read. Censorship and limited space/air-time have its benefits apparently, while the freer, less-controlled platform suffers from overcrowding and shouting contests.

Any and every organization needs feedback channels. What they don’t need is bad press, and solving problems publicly is, more often than not, bad press. (Some might say bad press is better than no press, but that’s another issue.)

To be able to solve those problems is not a facility of “social media.” It’s an internal function of the business. The way you’ve described it, what “social media” really offers is nothing but another channel of communication. It offers no real advantage over the traditional “Click here to contact us” button on a website. In fact, it may actually be more of a Pandora’s box….

Do you really want to open that can of worms?