Capulet Communications

Having a social media presence is mostly about building relationships, not unlike conventional marketing. But in social media, communication works both ways and in real time.

If a hard copy journal gives your product a bad review, the copy disappears from the shelves in a month or two and you can move on. Not so with a bad online review. Google’s cache system and internet archives ensure bad reviews stay online forever.

So, what can you do about it?

Domino’s Pizza was getting a lot of negative attention about the quality of its pizza on Twitter and in focus groups. Rather than ignoring the feedback, they took the opportunity to make a better product and responded to criticism on social media channels. They even went so far as to change their pizza recipe. They tell the story with a video called Pizza Turnaround and the Twitter hashtag #newpizza. When they were criticized for initially censoring negative comments on their own website, they decided to post them along with an explanation of what they were doing to make customers happier.

Domino’s turned a negative situation into an opportunity for engagement. Not only did they respond to the problem, they showed the world what they were going to do about it.

If your customers or critics are on YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, you should be too. Not responding to online criticism makes it look as though you are not a part of the internet community and that you are not monitoring the web closely enough. Even worse, it looks as though you don't care what customers and critics are saying. Though a negative review may last indefinitely on the web, so will your response and evidence of dialogue with your community.