If your marketing on the internet then you already know that no matter how good your product is someone will dislike it. This is just how it goes. I was on Twitter the other day and ran across a tweet about a consumer disliking a brand. The product had a hash tag about how bad their service was. It was on my mind for a while until the idea that perhaps the people that made that hash tag were the same people that the message was for. It would be genius if “Brand A” created a public, one-stop-spot space for negative feedback about their company.

     Why would you want to create negative attention to your own brand? Negative feedback will always come, at many different times, and in many different places, it’s inevitable. The answer is to get all of that negative commentary in one central local. Keeping track of negative feedback in one local is far easier and more efficient; many different places would require a lot more resources businesses don’t have. You will have a better opportunity to deliver a to consumers if you know exactly where to find them.

     Create an easy space for your consumers to go and voice their opinion; a social media space, comment box on your site, or get creative and start an entirely new website for the sole purpose of getting consumers to express their feeling towards your brand. This way, your PR team can focus less on searching and more on solving the problems more efficiently and accurately. What should not happen is editing comments. All content posted by your visitors should not be touched by you or anyone else involved in your brand. You want to develop a location consumers can be free to express everything without repercussions. Complete honesty from your consumer will always help better develop and deliver a product. By establishing this safe space, your consumer will be shown a layer of personality that most other businesses don't have.

     Another benefit from having a central local is that you will gain many other forms of information from your consumer base. Having this controlled, free, and safe place will lead to more specific topics. For example, a trade show is coming and you’re not sure if your PR/Marketing strategy is strong enough, consumers whom visit that space will leave clues as to what they are expecting. This doesn't only apply to trade events; this could be applied to other aspects of your business as well.    

    Negative feedback will happen no matter how hard you try. Once you accept that and begin working on a way to centralize that feedback is when you will begin delivering the right solution to your customers.