How To Handle Nasty Or Critical Comments From Readers

Jenny Marsden • Mar 16, 2020

What Do You Do If you Get A Negative Or Nasty Comment?

We've all heard those horror stories about businesses that have been victimised by nasty comments or online bullying, however how should you actually handle these things?

I'm going to outline here how I react to negative or nasty comments on my blog or social media posts.

Step 1 - Identify Which Type Of Comment It is

Reading anything negative that has been written about yourself or your business is confronting for sure. However, you need to take your emotive hat off, sit it on the shelf and analyse each comment on its merits.

I must do the usual disclaimer here and say that this will be different for all of you. Comments that I may think are destructive you may consider not that bad, so only you can devise a way of categorising them.

Why?

Our usual reaction to anything negative is to be upset or angry, however firstly you need to establish if the comment has real merit or it is simply just offensive.

I break these comments down into:

negative but with merit
negative with no merit
nasty
personal or business attack
completely offensive

This is how I handle each type of comment.

Step 2 - Handle Each Comment Based On The Category It Fits INto

Negative With Merit

If the comment isn't something you want to hear but has actual basis, that is a negative comment but it's not something you could or should ignore.

I immediately try and find out if this is an actual client or if its just someone randomly commenting.

If its a client the first thing I always do is reach out immediately via the phone.

I actually call them. They are clearly upset and if I've done something, or not done something that they are upset about I need to get onto them immediately and chat about what it is. I know some people are scared to call upset clients, however what is the absolute worst they can do? Yell at you.
If they do yell at me, calmly and with respect, I ask them if we can work through the challenge together so I can solve it for them. It's very hard to be angry or yell at someone who won't engage.
I let them vent and then ask if they will work through it with you and offer any solutions I can think of immediately.
If they refuse to stop yelling, again, calmly and with respect I ask if they can lower their voice so we can both worth though the challenge and solve it. I reiterate that I 100% want to fix the challenge, but I can't do it with them yelling at me.
I work through the challenge with them and come up with alternatives. If I don't know how I can solve it immediately, I SAY THAT! Do not lie or try and fudge your way through. I tell them I don't have a solution at this minute however I will give it my immediate and utmost attention and will try and get back to them in the next few hours with a better outcome.
If I can't solve it that day, I call them again and reiterate that its my only job today and I'm working on it. Never let it go over to another day without calling them back.
As far as the comment goes, I reply to the comment apologizing for the challenge and that I've reached out to them directly to obtain a solution. I always reply publicly as that shows people how I handle any challenges and reassures others that their input won't be ignored.

Negative Without Merit

Personally I think this is the hardest type of comment to deal with.

If I can work out its a client, I call them and try to work through it but if I don't know who it is, I reply to it as best I can. I try to address it immediately and if the visitor tries to engage and make something huge of it, I delete it. I feel that if I've addressed the comment and that doesn't suit them, its probably a nuisance comment and I'm not going to waste my time on it. I won't get into a he said she said so I just delete it.

Nasty Comments

If a comment is posted that has no purpose apart from being plain nasty, whether its on my blog or a social media platform I tend to delete it.

I know that often the experts say you are better to leave it there and ignore it I feel that it will seem weird to possible clients if I've responded to another negative comment but have left this one sitting there. If it has no purpose and is just hateful, its gone. I've got better things to do.

Personal or Business Attack

If someone chooses to attack me personally through a business platform, that is just not acceptable to me. I have absolutely no challenge just deleting these comment. Likewise if its an attack on my business with zero cause, again I delete it. I would consider an attack to be something like:

"This woman's an idiot. She doesn't know what she's talking about blah blah blah...."

Where as a negative comment with no merit I consider to be more specific. IE:

"This online store is rubbish. You can't edit the style and it shows too many products on the home page etc etc"

That one isn't true but is actually about something I do so I would categorise that as Negative with no merit. Its probably posted by someone who hasn't followed the training and is now angry that their store doesnt' look like they want it to. It has no merit because you can edit those things so that's how I would categorise it.

Completely Offensive

Fortunately I've only ever had one of these and about a year later I found out that the person had gotten mixed up with who they thought I was. Regardless there is no place in today's world for that kind of behavior and they get deleted immediately.

If its on my blog, there isn't always much you can do about blocking them, however if its on social media, I block and/or report them and then delete the post.

Step 3 - What To Do Now

Mostly, I just walk away.

If it's something I've addressed, I check on the client a few days later to be sure it solved their challenge. If its something I've deleted, I just forget about it.

The only person that will suffer from dwelling on comments posted by online trolls is you. Walk away and realise that there are some very unscrupulous people out there with nothing better to do and if it's not you it's someone else. It's rarely personal and if it is you are the only one that control your response.

I do however encourage you to contact the authorities if you feel threatened in anyway or if it continues. Remember to always take a screen shot of the post before you delete it so you have a reference if need be.

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About Jenny

I started my IT career in Database Administration and .Net coding. While I LOVED that work, I realised very quickly that I also wanted a life. To be a top end coder or DB Admin, you have to comit your downtime to constantly learning and evolving and while that is also something I love, I wanted it to be my work and not my life. So I morphed my love of design with my knowledge of all things SEO and moved into building small business websites.

Why small business websites? I'm a small business myself and I know how hard it can be so I wanted to give my clients a great service, with an approachable point of contact where no question was a "stupid question".

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