A company of 70 assisted-living and retirement homes in the Midwest hired us a few years ago to see if social media could help them communicate with the children of their residents.
Through our research, we discovered a Wii had been installed in every common living area throughout the entire organization…and residents were playing games on the consoles.
When tasked with the idea of using social media to engage the resident’s children, we knew we had to find a way to showcase these Wii competitions and see if we could extend them beyond each community.
Coming up on March Madness, we suggested they create the NCAA of Wii players and have the residents compete with one another.
As they played, it was recorded in real time and uploaded to the community’s website and through Facebook.
Then friends, families, and other residents could vote on the winner for each specific community. Just like in college basketball, each team could advance on and eventually face off in a “national” championship.
It was a lot of fun and people really got into it—sharing the videos, asking for votes, and suggesting games to play. And, let’s be real, retired people playing Wii is pretty fantastic.
One week, in the middle of all of this, the CEO and I were traveling to a conference together.
The night before it began, we were in the hotel bar chatting about work and he asked to see this creation of ours. I pulled out my laptop, opened Facebook, and scrolled through the different pages to show him how active and engaged his communities were in this contest.
As we were scrolling through, someone posted on the page a very scathing comment. It was unprofessional, it was mean, and it used a lot of swear words.
The woman was the daughter of a resident and she was angry after receiving a call from her mother, who was extremely upset about her visit to the beautician that day. Apparently she’d had her hair colored and it turned blue.
The CEO backed away from the computer and put his hands up as if it were on fire.
We talked about what to do and then he timidly put his hands on the keyboard and typed,
I’m the CEO and I just saw this. Would you mind sending me your phone number so I can call you?
The woman did so and he took out his cell phone and called her. Right then and there.
He learned this wasn’t the first time her mother’s hair had been turned blue by the hairdresser and the salon refused to do anything about it. She was upset at their lack of empathy and customer service. He let her vent for a good 10 minutes and then offered her mom three free salon visits. He also called the salon manager and had a talk with her to be sure that never happened again.
The woman was so pleased with his responsiveness, she went back to the Facebook page and posted about it. Today she is one of the company’s biggest fans.
Of course, it’s not always going to be the most senior person in the organization responding to the critics, but it isn’t hard to turn a critic into a fan if you apologize and fix the situation.
When this happens to you—and it will happen to you so don’t bury your head and pretend no one will ever be unhappy enough to post publicly about you—there is a four-step process you should employ.
Most of you have sites, communities, and content that increases your brand awareness, helps you position yourself in your market, and generates new leads.
But there will be occasions when people will want to tear you down. Sometimes those people will be anonymous—in those cases, you can decide to ignore them.
In other cases, they’ll be people you already know—they may have vocally complained about you in the past, or they may be a friend turned foe.
Whoever it is, it’s important to be strategic about dealing with criticism. The following seven steps will help.
It’s a very uncomfortable position to be in. None of us want to be criticized or have critics.
But, as the saying goes, if people either love you or hate you, you’re doing something right.
Set your timer for 30 minutes and pull out a piece of paper—either in a notebook or on your computer.
Now you are going to create drafts of your internal and external policies for dealing with critics.
If you already have policies, that’s great! You’re far ahead of the competition. In that case, you’ll review them both and revise and update them.
If you don’t already have them, spend 15 minutes jotting down things that will go in your internal policy and 15 minutes on your external policy.
Of course, you’ll have to revise and finalize these—and get them approved, in most cases, but this will give you a good start.
Set your timer and go!
If you are participating in the Spin Sucks scavenger hunt, today you will visit Jon-Mikel Bailey’s blog.
The secret word is in his blog post, “Good Branding, UX, and Content Marketing Start with Your Story.”
Just write down the secret word in Jon’s box on your scavenger hunt card (if you don’t have a card, download it here).
We have through March 3, so keep playing along.
And don’t forget…if you buy a copy of Spin Sucks between now and March 8, we’ll send you a fun package full of goodies to use in your office.
Just email the receipt to iboughtspinsucks@armentdietrich.com. Please include your mailing address so we know where to send the package.
Now get to work! Thirty minutes. Go!
image credit: Shutterstock
Gini Dietrich is the founder, CEO, and author of Spin Sucks, host of the Spin Sucks podcast, and author of Spin Sucks (the book). She is the creator of the PESO Model and has crafted a certification for it in partnership with Syracuse University. She has run and grown an agency for the past 15 years. She is co-author of Marketing in the Round, co-host of Inside PR, and co-host of The Agency Leadership podcast.