Social media is a wonderful tool to connect with loyal fans and potential customers directly and organically. It’s also a perfect opportunity for consumers to air their grievances, in both positive and negative ways. When the latter happens, it’s important for brands to have a plan in place to separate the trolls from the real-life consumer issues, and standard operating procedure to act upon in each situation.

When brands receive negative criticism, they have a few options to deal with it:

Ignore

This is an option brands should practice with great care. If your brand’s social media daily interactions tally in the thousands upon thousands, replying to everyone can become hard to do. Comments from trolls can generally go ignored, unless others start to pick up on them. When negative comments go unchecked completely, they can turn into a social media wildfire that brand’s social media managers may have a hard time putting out.

Delete

Again, this is generally a no-no when it comes to managing social media accounts, unless the comments are overtly threatening, racist, or derogatory. When comments are deleted, brands are simply adding fuel to the wildfire. Rather than commenting and leaving it be, users will feel obligated to share with their entire networks the continuing negative treatment they’re receiving, solidifying in their minds (and their friends and families minds) why they should never do business with you again.

This article first published on March 16, 2016 on Salesforce. To read the full article, please click here.