Is Your Online Reputation in the Toilet?
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even plumbers. Also, everyone is entitled to share that opinion with whomever they choose, again, including plumbers. However, just because you can have and share an opinion, that doesn’t mean you are free from repercussions if your audience isn’t appreciative of your comments. And yes, this goes for plumbers, as well.
And if you’re a plumber who owns his own business, that last part could be problematic.
Maybe you’re aware that your opinions aren’t all that popular, or that you’re the red sock in a drawer full of white ones and therefore you’re careful with whom you share your opinions. You’re careful about who can see your Facebook page, and you don’t post controversial items on your business page. (If you aren’t aware, here’s your wake-up call. Keep the fiery comments off your business page.) But that’s still a risk.
How? Because if you have friends who share your posts, eventually something you’ve posted is going to be seen by the public-at-large. And that could spell disaster for your business because people tend to not want to do business with people who share beliefs that are radically different from their own, especially if the business requires the two to interact. For example, a plumber coming to someone’s home.
The easiest way to protect your reputation is to not post anything controversial, but let’s face it, it’s actually hard to know what is offensive these days (Hint: Everything is offensive. Someone will probably take offense to this post.) The key is to keep it in as small a circle as possible and restrict what others can do with it.
Don’t Make Things Shareable
Turn off the ability for people to share what you post. You can do this on Facebook in your settings. If you’re using other social mediums such as Instagram or Twitter, you don’t have that option, so if you Tweet something or post something on IG, you’ll just have to deal with the consequences (more about that later).
Specifically Select Who Can See Your Posts
Again, this is something you can do on Facebook through your settings, but short of blocking people, it can’t be done on Twitter or Instagram. Choose people to send your more controversial posts to. People who agree with you or with whom you have discussions. Just don’t send it through your main feed.
But let’s say you ignore all the advice above because, darn it, you have the right to express yourself. As we said earlier, of course you do, but that right comes with some consequences. So, let’s say you go ahead and share that post on (pick a controversy - any controversy) and you start to get hate comments and negative reviews on your business page.
What do you do then? You have several options.
Option 1: Read and Engage. You can read the comments and attempt to discuss the issue in a civil manner. Sometimes you can win people over, sometimes others might win you over. Or you might just agree to disagree and move on.No one is saying you should never share your opinions. But if you do and there’s a problem, now you know some ways to solve it.
Option 2: Delete ad Deny. We do NOT recommend this one, but it’s a common reaction to hate comments, especially those posted on a business page. People will know you deleted the comments and then they’ll call you out for doing that as well as your post that generated the hate to begin with. We can’t say this strongly enough: DO NOT DO THIS!
Option 3: Apologize and promise not to make the same mistake in the future. Maybe after engaging with others, you changed your stance, or maybe you just want the hate to stop. Whatever your motivation, a well-crafted apology could stop the bulk of the hate comments. Oh, you may still get some, but they’ll slow down. And once the slow-down starts, the sharing stops. And that’s what you want at this point.
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