Social Media is now a must-use tool for modern marketers, lookinst g for effective ways and means of customer engagement. Popular social networks provide emerging as well as established brands with new ways of reaching out to a wider audience in the most cost effective manner.
They allow a smoother exchange of meaningful messages directed at a focused user group, enabling a potentially massive community of participants to productively collaborate. However, there is also a flipside in form of negative campaigns that are run intentionally by rival groups out to scuttle your rising success graph or ones that originate spontaneously from aggrieved customers, not happy with your products and services. So what is the best way to deal with them?

Counter the ill-effects of negative publicity

Posting thoughtful and fact based responses to the negative campaigns against your brand is vital to counter such allegations in the social realm. You may encourage your long-standing clients with credibility in market space to do the same. This is a very effective strategy to protect your online reputation. On your part, you may continue posting positive comments on your own business site as well as through the other popular publishing channels that you have been using.

Is legal action advisable?

In most cases, legal action should be considered as a last resort. There are reasons to say so, even though many business owners may feel tempted to take legal recourse. However, they should bear in mind the fact that legal measures can prove very time consuming and costly. Also, the end outcome cannot be defined with certainty. Results will obviously vary from one case to another.

Consider a practical instance in which the identities of the company or individual(s) causing damage to you brand are not known to you. They (the individuals or institutions) may or may not be based outside the US. It’s not easy to chase them and act against them. It has been observed that such kind of malicious campaigns are usually short lived in nature, unless they are by a major rival group bent on tarnishing your reputation.

To sustain such effort, a lot of effort is needed to make it appear genuine. It takes tact on the part of the group or individual who started it. Certainly, it’s only in the best interests of a business to forcefully counteract the damaging comments or content. However, it can safely be assumed that the unidentified ‘conspirators’ will ultimately give up on hosting the negative reviews.

In essence, time is the best remedy to protect against the ill-effects of negative publicity. Depending on the situation, you may need to take corrective steps with help and advice from social media specialists.