A lot of business people I talk to are nervous that they might get negative attention online or that somebody might post awful things about them through social media. They worry that this will damage their reputation.

This actually happened recently to one of my clients that has a very active social media presence. We had posted a link to our newsletter on our private group on LinkedIn and one of our readers took exception to some of the information that had been included in the article. This man posted a comment that publicly stated he thought the article was inaccurate and misleading and that we should check our facts before publishing.

My client is an industry leader with an international presence and we have thousands of people, all of them potential clients, in that group. The information in question had come from a respected industry expert but the article was phrased in a way that could be seen as ambiguous and it was possibly open to some misinterpretation.  My client was understandably worried about the claim that we were misleading people and we posted a response to the comment that:

• Thanked the reader for their vigilance and their concern
• Told the reader that we valued their input
• Reminded readers generally that we strive for accuracy and
• Asked the reader if we could email him directly to discuss the issue in more detail.

The reader was glad to be acknowledged and he had made some good points. We revised the article to take his points into consideration and because he himself was an expert in this area, we asked him to review the revised article to ensure we had our facts straight. Then we took the revised article back to the person from whom we had originally received the information, and asked her to review the man’s changes. Once we had a revision everybody was happy with, we posted a new link to it in the LinkedIn group, along with our thanks to the reader for helping us maintain the credibility and value of the information we share.

Case closed. Everybody was happy.

Now, it does happen that sometimes you get a comment from someone who is substantially less interested in quality information than they are about the need to bring someone, anyone, to their knees online. You can’t do much about those people. If they try to post a comment to your blog, you don’t have to publish it if your blog is located on your website. So no one sees it. But social media is the Wild West and if someone makes a nasty comment on social media, your best bet is to maintain a reasoned and reasonable response, and politely steer the conversation offline. If they just won’t go, your calm, cool, and collected responses will demonstrate to other readers that the guy is out of line and they will usually come to the defense of the wronged party.

But it’s been my experience that those things rarely happen. The benefits of social media far outweigh the disadvantages and if we spend our entire lives in fear of what other people are going to say about us we will never benefit from the good things that social media can deliver.

If you would like to know more about how my team and I can support you in the development of your social media presence, please contact me at susan@crossmancommunications.com and let’s talk about it!