By: Jenn Seeley I know what you’re thinking. Why on earth would you want to befriend and know the people who say mean things about you? Surely you’ve heard the adage to keep your friends close and your enemies closer? Apply that to your detractors. Instead of being your enemy, they can turn out to be completely the opposite.
Recently, I shared how to find and friend your influencers. Let’s begin by finding your detractors in a similar fashion.
1. Begin with Google
A simple web search for ‘Brand Detractor’ is not going to be sufficient. Search for negative terms along with your brand. Think like someone who may be disappointed and use the language you feel you may hear from them. If your brand is one that has had feedback cards or mail-in comments of a negative tone, look to those as resources and inspiration. You’re looking specifically for blogs and news articles that have been written about your brand. Bad reviews especially.
2. The search continues
This is where you’ll dig a little deeper into the people who are sharing negative things about you with their networks. By doing a Twitter search for each name or news source, you’ll get a better understanding of their purpose and goals. As with tracking and managing influencers, I recommend keeping tabs on the people speaking poorly about you via a spreadsheet or other catalogue. How else are you going to track progress while you work to understand their views and hopefully change their mind about you?
3. Still searching
Your initial Google search is not the final answer. There’s more digging to be done, so try also using Twitter to search for your brand along with negative words and phrases.
4. Monitoring tools
There are tools built specifically for listening and monitoring. Radian6 is one such example. If you’re serious about monitoring what’s being said about your brand, consider a platform that helps you listen to what is being said about you.
5. Influence is still important
One person’s detractor may be another person’s influencer. The higher the influence and following that your detractor has, the more important it is for you to attempt to connect with them and consider their opinions carefully. Remember to check out tools such as Klout, Kred, and PeerIndex.
6. Influence is personal
The popularity of one Twitter handle is not the final answer. If a seemingly small and unknown individual tweets poorly about your brand, and someone of greater reach picks up on it, you want to be paying attention. Peer pressure and peer influence have been messing us up since the playground. We are all influenced differently.
7. Keeping tabs across multiple platforms
Does the detractor you’ve identified blog in one spot? Are they on Google+? Be sure to learn where they are most active and who seems to be most affected by the content they share.
8. Listen
Your fans are raving about you, and often times simply screaming about how awesome you are. When they’re happy, they have less need to provide feedback, because they have all the faith in the world that you’ll figure it out and continue to be awesome. Your detractors on the other hand? They’re hollering other things. Including ways that you’ve personally affected them negatively, ways your product failed them, reasons why no one else should go near you, etc. They may be alerting you to important issues that need immediate rectification.
9. Repair and build relationships
Once upon a time, some of your detractors may have been a fan. It’s not difficult to imagine how your very best customer and cheerleader can also be your worst detractor if things go terribly wrong between the two of you. Vocal people are going to be vocal and passionate about the good, the bad, and the ugly. Detractors cannot always be won over, and be careful about making this your goal. More important than being kind and friendly, is to avoid fighting back at all costs. A virtual fistfight will tarnish your image and rile up your detractor even more. In many cases, it’s best to not engage your detractors.
While it doesn’t exactly feel nice to hear bad things being said about your brand, effective monitoring and listening can help you learn how your target audience really feels about you as a brand. Keep in mind that pleasing everyone is impossible, and that while advice and feedback that cost you nothing is valuable, it’s not always worth taking. Just like on the playground, there are bullies in this world who are push back simply for the sake of pushing.
Not paying close attention to your detractors could lead to a bigger issue down the road, where repairing the damage done to your brand could prove more difficult. Have a look at this free ebook for help in damage control.
Tags: detractors, google, identify detractors, social media detractors
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