I am sure that you can guess where the inspiration came from for the title of this post. The original wording is to accentuate the positive and eliminate the negative. For the purposes of this post, I shall endeavor to explain why taking the advice of the original wording would be the wrong thing to do in the world of social media.

Social Media 1.0 was one of two things if you were a business. Firstly, it was a very scary place and secondly, it was something that you consigned to the to do list of the company intern (not that there is anything wrong with interning - I have done it myself many times). Once businesses had gotten their heads around the fact that people were talking about them, the panic started to set in. What if people say something bad about us? Can we delete their posts? Can we make them take their comments down? These businesses took the lyrics of the song literally... Let's eliminate the negative. They were also the same businesses who thought that accentuating the positive meant retweeting every single positive mention of their brand (and many are STILL guilty of this). These two things are the ultimate social sins in my opinion.

The simple answer to the above questions was and still is no. Unless a comment is abusive in it's tone or language, then they should not be deleted. Instead of seeing the negative as a problem, see it as an opportunity. When a person loves your brand, the work is already done for you. All that remains for you to do is to nurture that relationship so that their love of your brand continues. When a person is not in love with your brand or has had a bad experience with your product or service, it is your job to:

A) Acknowledge
B) Apologize
C) Make amends

Remember that social media is word of mouth amplified. To ignore the negative is not to eliminate it... It is antagonizing and exacerbating an already bad situation. Over the years there have been many examples of businesses trying to quash negative public opinion that has been shared on social media and, on many occasions, it has resulted in a PR disaster for those businesses. Whether you like it or not, people are going to complain about you and sometimes for no reason at all other than the fact that they can... My suggestion is that you get used to this and deal with it accordingly.

Sometimes something as simple as a tweet apologizing for the inconvenience caused is all it takes to turn the situation around. Other times more effort will be required on your part. Where the latter is the case, my advice is to take a two-pronged approach:

(1) Public conversation: acknowledge, apologize, and request contact details if necessary (which should be sent privately).

(2) Private (offline) conversation: once contact details have been received, pass this information onto the relevant department within your business so that they can deal with the matter accordingly and continue to monitor the public conversation.

The best case scenario is that the public conversations go from being negative to positive - hopefully this will be in direct correlation with the conversations taking place offline. Obviously, you cannot force anyone to say positive things about your brand, but by seeking to resolve the matter, you are demonstrating that:

(a) You care about your customers,
(b) You are not afraid to deal with public criticism.

Bear this in mind... As a business you will not be able to please everyone. There will be situations in which despite your attempts at a suitable resolution, the customer remains unhappy and will vent their frustration via social media channels. Do not get into an ongoing public conversation with them as this could potentially turn negative. Keep the offline lines of communication open but ensure that you maintain social conversation monitoring tactics (in other words, keep an eye on what's being said publicly just in case).

Another way to deal with the negative is to engage in proactive social listening alongside your reactive social listening. Not all social conversations around your brand will mention you directly. Therefore it is in your interest to conduct searches for conversations across various platforms where people are talking about your brand/business. A word of caution... Not all of these conversations will be suitable for brand intervention. And unfortunately, there is not a definitive check list on which conversation should be addressed and which should be left alone. There are the obvious things like checking the accounts that these conversations are coming from to get an idea of who is talking about you, but on the whole, intuition will play a big part in your decision-making process (something I will talk about in a future post). If you are in any doubt as to whether you should get involved in the conversation, that is probably your intuition telling you to stay away (don't ignore it). Where it is appropriate to get involved, do you homework - research the people talking about you and the issues being discussed. Personally speaking, I would be very impressed if a brand took the initiative to contact me based on a conversation where they were not referenced directly (provided it was appropriate for them to do so).

Of course, all of the above should already be in your social media crisis management communications plan... If you haven't got one, then I suggest that you put one together immediately.

When it comes to social, stop being so scared of the negative... It is the perfect opportunity to demonstrate how customer-centric your brand is. Personally, I cannot think of a better way to build an engaged audience and brand loyalty which will contribute significantly to a successful social business (read about the difference between social branding social business here).