Surprisingly yes.

Negative comments give you two benefits.

1.  Negative comments let you address legitimate problems.  Let’s face it we aren’t perfect.  We make mistakes.  Release defective products.  And don’t always have the best customer service.  If you bring your meaning to your work, then you care about quality and service.  Wouldn’t you rather address the problem and have a chance at turning an unhappy customer into a satisfied customer?  Negative comments give us this chance.

2.  Negative comments help set customer expectations.  What?!  How is talking about the bad things good?!  Well let me go back to our old friend the “realistic job preview.”  People are more satisfied if their experience matches their expectations.  If there are some legitimate, but negative comments, then you know what you’re getting into.  Overly positive comments smell like fake reviews.  No comments at all suggest no one uses your product.  Ironically having a few negative comments makes people feel more comfortable with what they are buying.  That is, of course, assuming that negative comment isn’t a deal breaker.

Allowing feedback is a great way to grow your brand.  And as you can see, there are benefits even to negative feedback.  When I bought my car I did a lot of research on the internet.  I read just about every customer review I could find.  Especially the negative comments.  I wanted to know what might be wrong with my car in the future.  The two biggest issues were the road noise from the tires and not being able to see the “corners” of the car.  I decided that those weren’t enough to stop me from buying my car.  So when I bought my car I found out that my two biggest complaints were the road noise and not being able to see the corners.

My expectations had been set, and I knew what I was getting into.  I had already decided I could live with that.  So instead of buying a car for $20,000 and being upset that it wasn’t quiet, I was prepared, and the road noise didn’t even faze me.  8 years later I love my car, and couldn’t be happier.

I owe that to the realistic expectations I developed and negative comments.  What do you owe to negative comments?

image provided by wikimedia

So companies are making a lot of money offering services to “manage your online reputation”.

Usually the advice they give is something like this.

1. Be careful what you say online
2. Control the content your friends put online about you
3. Actively promote yourself online in places like LinkedIn or Facebook

Those are all good things to do.  Certainly there’s nothing wrong with asking your estranged Uncle Philip to stop talking about alien abductions on your Facebook Wall or asking an old college buddy to take down those pictures of you after your 21^st birthday.

But is this really the right approach?

To me it seems like a lot of work.  It takes a lot of effort to cover up all your imperfections.  So why not live your life open?  Why not work at making yourself a better person instead of hiding the skeletons in your closet?  If you’ve got to work somewhere, why not work where you can make a long term impact?

Let’s face it; people like Tiger Woods and Ben Roethlisberger have been rocked by scandal.  If they, and their millions, couldn’t protect their reputations, how likely is it that you can protect yours?

Of course it’s not just about avoiding trouble.  It’s about making a difference.  When we live a life of consistency other’s notice.  We aren’t one person on Facebook and another person in the office.  We’re the same person no matter who we are talking, and no matter where we are “existing.”  How much trust do you think people have in you when they know you act one way at work, and another way at home?

Will this attitude lose us out on some clients or maybe even a job?  Possibly.  But isn’t it worth it to not worry about what someone’s going to say about you in some far reaching corner of the internet?

Life is too short to worry all the time.

photo provided by flickr user vagawi

The internet is not always filled with calm, reasoned people.  If you’ve ever read comments on YouTube you know exactly what I’m talking about.  People take great pride in ripping apart things they haven’t spent any time thinking about.  We call them trolls.

But there’s also a group of people who have legitimate complaints.  They are rightly upset at poor customer service or disappointed in receiving a bad product.  What do we do with them?  How do we respond to their negative comments?  Do we just turn comments off all together?

Those are good questions.  Because if you’re starting a business online the last thing you want is for people to rip you apart.

So how do we respond to negative comments?

First we need to resist the urge to turn comments off.  While some blogs / websites work well without comments, removing comments breaks a great advantage of using social media (you know, the social part).  Secondly, the absolute worst thing you can do is arbitrarily delete and edit comments.  You can’t allow some bad comments, but edit others.  It reeks of favoritism and selective behavior.  And those are two things that will set your audience against you.

So again, how do we respond to negative comments?

I recommend two things:

1.  Assume innocence.  Don’t jump to the conclusion that the commenter is an evil, uneducated, morally questionable troll.  Assume that maybe they just aren’t very good at expressing themselves.  Not everyone is a Pulitzer prize winning author!  And even if they are a troll you don’t need to become one yourself.

2.  Address the feedback.  Don’t attack the commenter.  Address the feedback.  Maybe your product does really suck.  Maybe you need to fix your customer service.  Maybe they just caught you on a bad day.  Address the feedback by giving specific, action-oriented, steps you are taking to correct the issue.

3.  Thank them.  They may be unhappy.  But they are still a customer.  If you assume innocence, address their concerns, then they may very well become another customer.  Thanking them is a way to show them that you are a real person, and that you actually care.  People are forgiving if they think you care.  Plus, just because they don’t like your product it doesn’t mean your manners have to disappear!

Receiving negative comments is never easy.  But dealing with them now gives us a chance to salvage relationships and build good will.  Ignoring complaints may make you feel better, but it doesn’t solve the problem.  If someone is upset enough to post on your page, then they are upset enough to post somewhere else.  This way, you can at least know there’s a problem and can fix it.

photo provided by flickr user zachklein

If you haven’t heard, the Apple / Google wars heat up.  Both of these companies are poised to become huge players in the emerging “super phone” market.  Which means that billions, if not trillions, of dollars are at stake.  This is why Apple’s lobbing of legal grenades is so important.  With filings targeted at Google’s phones (specifically the HTC models), Apple is saying they won’t take iPhone encroachment lightly.

This isn’t new.

Apple and Microsoft used to be at war.  Google and Microsoft used to be at war.  Microsoft and Sony are still at war.  Every major company seems to go to war with its competitors.

Of course the people who get hurt in these wars are you and I, the consumers.

So why do it?

Because companies are afraid.  They are afraid of the economy.  Of losing market share.  Of not making money.  And when we are afraid, we demand more control. This is especially true when we are the “big player” in the conversation.

Apple is no longer the underdog.  They are what Microsoft was in the 1990’s: the dominant market player.

But this isn’t a knock on Steve Jobs (Apple CEO).  We all fight the temptation to power up out of fear.  When something is uncertain we try and grab a hold of as much as we can.  We figure the more we can control, the better we will be.  When your kids start acting out what do you do?  You put them in time out or ground them from TV.  When new technology is introduced into the workplace, how do companies respond?  By banning employees from using Facebook or locking down the internet.

But what if that’s the wrong strategy?  What if the way to unleash your real potential – the way to get out of trouble – is to let people have the freedom to do what they do best?  What if instead of micromanaging we allowed our employees to innovate?  What if instead of trying to manipulate the market we just own up to a bad product and redouble our efforts to build a better product?

Of course that takes work.  And there isn’t an immediate satisfaction of “getting even.”

The best and brightest don’t want to live in a climate of fear and control.  Microsoft discovered that in the 90’s as a lot of the best and brightest left and went to work for Google and Apple.  You know who stays behind in a climate of fear and control?  The people who can’t find jobs elsewhere.

So the next time you find yourself wanting to power up, ask yourself, am I seeking control or my own destruction?

photo provided by flickr

I don’t have a right to any of that, I need to seek your permission (verbally or otherwise) to earn the privilege of talking to you on Meaning to Work.  This is very different from interrupt marketing (think spammers and TV commercials).

Permission marketing is also what has driven social media to its current success.  We give our permission to connect with one another.  If I want to be your friend on Facebook I have to ask you first.  Then you have to agree.  It’s permission both ways.  Even if it’s permission only out of obligation or social pressure.

The further away from direct permission we get, the more we dislike the social marketing.  One of the biggest complaints people have about Facebook is Facebook spam.  And you know where the bulk of that comes from?  The people we friend only out of social obligation.  The people we don’t give “real” permission to.

All of this brings us to Google’s new product Google Buzz.

Google Buzz is Google’s attempt to fight back on the social media front.  They recognize, like most of us, that social media is the future of software (at least the foreseeable future).  The problem is, they appear to have removed permission from the equation.  They automatically link your most emailed gmail contacts into your “buzz”.  This is then shown to the public.  By default.  Which means your mom can see all of your contacts – or as Gizmodo pointed out – your current girlfriend may suddenly see an ex-girlfriend in your circle.

You can edit all of this.  But why should you need to edit it?  Gmail isn’t just a social email platform – many people, myself included, use it for work.  And I want a little more control over how my information is shared between clients and an old drinking buddy from college that I haven’t seen in 10 years!

Now I admit I’m a bit of a fan of privacy.  I think things should be private until I give my permission to make them public.  But Google wants all that information out there.  Why?  Because they make their money on information. If we block permission to our social networks – then Google has less information.  Less information means less money.

Will this doom Google Buzz?  Unlikely.  Google will most likely change the settings.

The bigger issue is that Google seems to be walking away from the idea of permission marketing.  What does that mean for the giant?  What does that mean for us?  The products we use?  Is this the beginning of the end for permission marketing?  Or are we simply going to see permission-centric people moving to newer technologies and platforms?

There are a lot of questions that will be answered in the coming months.  Google has either shot itself in the foot, or changed the way we view permission.  Either way, change is on the horizon.

this weekend I ordered a new mouse for my computer.  My old mouse, which I have owned for more than a decade, finally died.  So after much deliberation I finally settled on a Logitech G500.  I had considered a more expensive Logitech mouse, but decided it wasn’t worth the $30 or $40 difference.

Well Amazon “knew” I was looking at mice and today sent me an email announcing a sale for the newer model.

They were just a few hours too late.  Could I have changed my order?  Probably.  But psychologically I already bought that G500.  In my mind I’ve already justified why it’s “better” than the more expensive (and newer) G9X.

What does this have to do with Meaning to Work?  Simple.  Even in an age of instant communication, sometimes things move too slowly.  We lose out on sales, customers, and business because we couldn’t move fast enough.

Does this mean we should move faster?  No.  Because most of us are already moving too fast.  You can see this in the news cycle.  With the ever present demand for more information, faster, reporters and editors are forcing stories out that aren’t fully fact checked.  And on pretty much a weekly basis you see some major news story retracted.  That’s fast.  But it’s not accurate

We need to get the right information to the right people at the right time.  Not faster.  Just right.

Of course how you do that is the challenge.

photo provided by imageafter.com