At some stage, all social media managers will have to deal with negative comments on their brand Pages or posts.

Some of these comments will be from blatant trolls – people trying to hijack the conversation, and/or making loosely connected remarks based on the original post. While others will be clear and passionate criticisms of your brand and/or product.

The former, in many cases, can be ignored (or deleted in the case of offensive remarks), but the latter needs to be addressed, in order to manage brand perception and maintain, and ideally improve, consumer standing.

So how do you go about it? What’s the best way to manage negative responses?

When you see a negative comment, your first reaction may be to respond in-kind, and dish out some of your own harsh responses to put the commenter in his or her place. This approach never generally doesn’t work out so well.

In order to formulate a better approach, the team from Digital Giants have put together this simple overview of how to respond to negative mentions. The steps here are basic, and easy to follow, and cover the key points that you need to keep in mind.

This can be a key element, and it’s important to have a coordinated approach to such within your business.

Check out the infographic below.