Handling Abrasive Corporate Blogging Comments

It is never easy receiving a negative comment on a corporate blog post. A negative comment may deflate your ego, or raise your blood pressure, especially if the person commentating is writing with feeling and gusto against you personally or your ideas.

When you receive a negative comment, even one that seems abrasive rather than immediately react to the comment. Take a few moments to separate the emotions from facts. Was the commentator factually correct, if so your response should be to clarify or even correct your post and thinking, if not again state the facts, making sure you make your points clearly.

I've had a few examples of abrasive comments in my years of blogging, in the early days, I did not always act with the thoughtfulness I might do today, but in each incident I've always learned something.

In a post from 2004 on the topic of marketing, I wrote about how marketing is all about listening to the customer. Except what happens when your customer is complaining. Here’s what I suggested, "Listen to their frustrations, their annoyances with a product & service. Out of negative or constructive feedback you will probably get your best ideas."

Try to separate emotion from facts. In one of my early posts from 2003 on the PR Communications blog, I had two people criticize me over time for the quality of the content in the post. One of the commentators was really mad at me for the post. Rather than start a flame war, I actually followed up with the commentator in an email, explaining that I appreciated their comment as it related to the facts in the post; I also posted a comment correcting the facts, and asked the commentator to follow up with another comment. The commentator obliged. Two things happened here, we resolved our differences and in the process I improved the content on my blog.

Oh REALLY?

thanks a lot for wasting my research time.... if you wanna define something, define it; dont form an ambiguous, non tangible self serving monologue that does not meet the objective that the text is meant to serve.

(i dont mean to be rude; just tired of looking for answers and grasping zero tangibles to work with)

After our back channel discussion and my follow up comment:

To begin with, thats a much more efficient articulation for what it is.

Secondly, i apologise for the tone of my first comment.

i was having a bad day.

i'm sure we've all had those frustrating hours of research where we just went off our head at somebody for no real reason.

sorry about that.

keep up the good work.

There's another issue in handling abrasive comments, you might consider deleting a post, or ignoring the critical comment. Think carefully before taking either path in responding to the critic.

Here's a section from my book, "Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging,” that puts these issues in perspective,

"There is some etiquette to responding to critical comments. A big part of responding to a critical comment is thinking about when to respond and when not to respond. You do not necessarily have anything to gain from responding to a critic, but on the other hand, if you do not respond, the assumption that maybe your critic was correct may arise in the blogging community. Challenging critics can be very dangerous, especially if you do not respond quickly, you are not sincere, or you do not follow-up on the discussion. Most bloggers discover that when a critic is answered, the response deflates a lot of the criticism, as you took the time to respond. If you just joined the discussion, a critic may tone down their criticism once it is realized the critic is not just complaining about someone in the abstract but a real person who is prepared to answer back."

Even if you have a negative comment on your own blog, deleting the post may just make it appear that you thought the comment might be right, and not responding does the same. Probably far better is to stick to the facts and respond. If you give a calm, reasoned answer, and stick to the facts the chances are that your detractor will come around, and if not, your readership will come to their own conclusions about who is the more credible authority.

For more on the topic of criticizing people on your blog see my post from 2007, "How should you criticize people on your blog?"