The Power of Negative Blogging

Saw this at David Boyle’s blog as I was browsing online. It is about corporations embracing criticism on their forums and comments. It came about from this Washington Post article that I will now excerpt here:

Welcome criticism. The first step is supporting interactive conversation, where site visitors can communicate with you. That’s easy. The next step is establishing a reputation that makes people feel comfortable being openly (and constructively) critical of your company either on your site or elsewhere online. Responding to reasonable criticism with a reasonable response will establish trust and credibility.

I think this is a great piece of business advice. No one corporation is perfect and an organization that is willing to look at itself in the mirror of its customer’s eyes will be able to grow and inspire brand loyalty. Making things too slick and too perfect makes people suspicious nowadays as seen here:

Harness your audience to do the work for you. In an age where everyone is concerned with controlling their message, this seems antithetical, but it’s actually more powerful and cost-effective. In fact, on sites such as Amazon and eBay, negative comments add an air of credibility to positive ones and actually help drive sales. Products that offer comments that have give a whiff of being “sanitized” don’t sell as well. Let people talk about you; it only gets others to do so, increasing the exposure of your brand.

I’m no marketing whiz, but people want to buy what other people want to buy. It’s pretty simple. If everyone wants an iPod, yet maybe there is a better mp3 player. Guess what? People are going to buy iPods.

So don’t be afraid of criticism. It’s free feedback and a low-cost focus group for you to improve your services or products.

Be positive…Think negative!