Digital Age Etiquette: How to Handle Negative Comments Online

Companies eager to embrace the vast, but unquantifiable benefits of social media also must deal with its downside. Digitally enabled whingers with viral capabilities certainly can damage a brand. Identifying legitimate complaints from the outpourings of cantankerous individuals is a skill for the new era in which brand value is being co-created by customers and others who care to comment. Understanding how to respond appropriately – and fast – is vital now cheap gibes can last in perpetuity, insist the experts.