Hopefully during the course of your WAH career, you’ll never have to deal with negative publicity. Unfortunately, things can happen, so we asked these experts what they would advise. This is what they told us:
Doug Sands suggests having multiple lines of communication open.
Website: Restaurant Clients Magnet
Befriend the Bloggers. These people are underpaid for their passion, and they’re looking for business friends. Befriend them before you need their help. Give them a scoop or two. Take them out to dinner. Give them insider’s interviews with you or other people in your business. In today’s media, what is said on blogs works its way up to printed news.
Get a newspaper on your side. Not only does it massively increase your credibility, but it also gives you an incredible media outlet to share your side of the story. Approach individual writers at the newspaper, not the entire company, and help them before expecting them to help you.
Encourage the Conversation. Most people think online PR management is about hushing up negative reviews. No way! Join the conversation and ask the person why they feel that way. Most often, bad reviewers are harsh simply because they feel their voice hasn’t been heard. When you reach out to them, many will be pleasantly surprised and willing to scale back their original comments. Some may delete their comments entirely.
Mahesh Kumar suggests counting any negativity with these tips:
Website: Transcription Certification Institute
To keep negative publicity at bay in my WAH career, I first prepared a publicity plan in terms of potential problems in the industry I work in and its impact on my business.
Since staying silent is not going to help anybody, I kept all my clients up to date. This benefited everyone by clearing up any misconceptions regarding my WAH business.
Whenever I was faced with online negative publicity, I immediately posted an explanation on my website. This helped everyone linked to my WAH business in getting to my side of the story directly.
Shaun Walker gives the tip to keep plugging away and working at creating more and more.
Website: HEROfarm
One of the best ways to get around negative publicity is content. Create create create. Fill the internet with content that promotes you, your business, and all the good you/it does. Do as much as you can by winning awards, producing articles, posting pictures, joining organizations, getting in the news, etc. Eventually, this will provide a mountain of evidence that balances or overtakes the negative content of the other person. It will, at least, give two sides to the story, along with that incredibly important third party validation professionals thrive on. While it may not completely overtake the negativity, it should provide enough content for people to see the other side of the story and draw a better conclusion.
Note from Leslie:
Negative comments, whether it’s a review, on social media, or the press, can ouch. And it can make you angry. But how you react to it can also make it worse, if don’t poorly. In many cases, ignoring negativity is the best course of action, especially in the case of opinion, such as in a review. However, if the negativity is valid, such as a customer didn’t receive their order, then you should respond. When necessary make apologies and restitution. Then do what you can to garner good press.
