What should you do if someone responds in a negative or derogatory way to your social media posts? We have all seen the back and forth banter that happens when two people disagree with each other on this medium. Should you respond to each and every post and risk the hate-filled push back from the other side? Should you simply ignore the disparaging remarks knowing that it will hurt your company brand? Or should you simply delete any post when you get a disgruntled comment?

Let’s face a rather tragic truth about social media. Many people feel free to show their ugliest sides on it. Name-calling and insisting that everyone agree with your opinion gets pretty slimy on social media. If you are in charge of marketing on social media of any kind, you need to have a plan so you know what to do when someone reacts in a negative way on your site. Here are some guidelines we have employed with our customers to know what to do in such a situation.

Who left the comment?

Is the person that’s leaving the negative comment a legitimate customer of yours or someone who is just having a hate-filled rant? The first thing we do is to determine who we are dealing with. If it is a customer, you should make contact with them ASAP and try to solve their problem. I would recommend you do this by some other means than replying on social media. When you can, use a communication device where you can have a voice-to-voice conversation: the phone or go see them in person. When you can’t do this, text or e-mail them. Find out why they are not happy with you. If you can resolve their issue, then their negative comment is well worth it to save a customer relationship. When you resolve the problem, ask them permission to take the comment off your site.

However, if you are getting blasted by someone who just wants to tear you and your company down, take their comments off your site. One of our clients had a customer who left a nasty note on a blog post one day. We went into damage control, finding out who the person was and figuring out why he would leave such a comment. As it turned out, we had featured a project that one of his competitors (also my client’s customer) had just completed and praised the project for its excellent workmanship. Jealousy was at the heart of the comment. We deleted it. In another instance, a former employee left nasty remarks about the management of one of our client’s businesses. There is nothing to be gained by leaving that kind of stuff on your social media pages. Get rid of it when you can.

I can’t delete all comments

Certain social media sites give the administrator great control over comments. Others do not. For instance, I can delete individual comments on LinkedIn without taking down an entire post. Twitter and Facebook will not allow me to delete individual comments, but I can take down a post. However, review sites, such as Google Places will not allow you to delete negative comments. What can you do? Bury the negative comment by adding several positive reviews. Ask satisfied customers to say a few words on these sites. Very few people ever get past the first page of reviews. Most people need a little prompting to make this happen, so ask to be recommended, liked, followed or shared.

Don’t get into an online shouting match

These never turn out good. Even when someone gets nasty with you, be respectable if you reply to their comment. Remember that it might be better to walk away than to try to make your point on social media.

Everyone deserves a response if they are legit

Remember that if you are dealing with a business social media site, the point of marketing is to gain and retain customers. If someone says something negative and they are a legitimate customer or potential customer, they deserve a response of some kind. If you do reply to them via social media, it might be best to answer with a "I will have someone call you to talk about your problem” rather than try to fix their beef online where everyone is privy to your conversation and people are emboldened to get nasty. Diffuse the situation with your response.