A colleague of mine has a great printing company—having worked with many printers, they are the best of them all at customer service and helping people figure out the best way forward with their printing needs. So imagine a scenario when they made a mistake, and thought they had resolved the issue to the clients’ satisfaction, only to find out that the disgruntled client used every social media venue, from reviews on Dex and Google Maps to Yelp, to flame and rant.

This is the dark side of social media: the ability to really hurt a good company. So what are the best practices when your reputation is under attack?

First, listen. My friend, Kevin Sullivan of CCS Printing, said:

“I had no idea these reviews were on Google (maps) and being seen by hundreds of customers a month until I did a search yesterday and saw the low star rating. So we’ve probably been losing some opportunities for 90 days due to our lack of inspection on reviews online. So, multiple morals to the story; First, take care of problems promptly (very promptly), second, inspect your brand online everywhere all the time, and third, have a plan in place to drive positive reviews from your willing and happy customers. The vocal minority often seem to outshout the happy majority. Happy customers don’t feel a need to take the time to say good things. But they might if they were asked nicely. One unhappy customer can assume multiple online personalities and trash your brand if they are vindictive enough.”

Kevin went on these sites and explained the situation in a reasonable and transparent way, a good response to a negative event.

So, if you’ve used CCS and had a great experience, take a couple of minutes online to say so. And keep listening to what the market is saying—and respond when you need to.

-Lynn Parker

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I met someone at a networking event who told me that branding couldn’t help him, because he was in a commodity market. In my belief system, that’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. As I said in my book, The Reluctant Entrepreneur, “If they can brand water, or salt, (and they have!) any company can find its unique approach, role in the market, or other secret sauce and build it into a competitive differentiation, even in markets where there are many people who buy on price.”

It just takes creativity, like CCS Printing, positioning itself as the guide to lowest total cost of ownership (TCO) printing, offering workshops, and using an Indiana Jones-like fedora image to demonstrate their consultative approach to ink on paper. Like Silver Cup Coffee, packaging their retail experience into products and services that take their coffee beans out of the commodity world. Like Ethos water that turns hydration into an act of philanthropy.

If you think you’re in a commodity market, I challenge you to question that assumption. Why do people buy from you, above and beyond your product and price? And even if they buy on price, why would your prospect choose you to supply the product?

-Lynn Parker

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