Best practice would be to respond to any negative reviews so customers or prospects can see that you’re being active and trying to address the negativity. Clearly this has to be evaluated on a case-by-case basis and you should have a crisis comms plan in place to help you navigate this.
But one of the best ways to drown out the negative news is to push out a constant stream of positive, relevant and authoritative content that reaffirms your company or brand in the eyes of your customer.
You need to think about the sentiment – and seriousness – of the negative news though because this may impact how your approach your next proactive piece of content. It may be that you need to proactively address the negativity via a statement on social or on your website, in the first instance.
Social listening is really useful here i.e. you can see what’s being said about your brand, gauge and benchmark sentiment and monitor any trends to help inform the direction and tone you take.
Occasionally there will be individuals or groups on social media that may take a particular dislike to your brand. It can be the case that any engagement with their content simply stokes the fire so, in some instances, you will have a list of critics you decide not to engage with, no matter what they have said. Again, this would be detailed in your crisis comms plan and would involve things like understanding how active they are on social, how many followers they have and how engaged their followers are before making a decision.
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