Econsultancy and bigmouthmedia’s recent “Social Media and Online PR Report” offers suggestions for damage control based on a survey of 344 advertisers already operating in social media in the UK, Europe, and North America. The two top ways to counter negative comments were directly engaging the commenter (47%), and improving the quality of products or services being advertised (33%). Another strategy is neutralizing the negative comment, either by encouraging other consumers to leave positive comments (24%) or attempting to get the content removed by the publisher or blogger (14%).
47% of respondents said they use Twitter for “brand monitoring,” 27% use the site for responding to customer service issues, 25% use it to gather customer feedback, and 23% use it for market intelligence. 34% of companies surveyed said they responded to negative tweets “systematically.” 62% of respondents as a channel for publicizing new content. Only 14% of respondents reported using Twitter as a sales channel, and 21% said they didn’t use it for any of the purposes listed above. Article at MediaPost.
