How To Deal With Negativity In Your Instagram Comments

Social networks are a powerful business tool that allows companies to approach millions of customers and place promo messages daily. They also represent a convenient customer service platform that helps you to maintain relationships and answer users’ inquiries quickly.

But every coin has two sides, and you will occasionally bump into adverse reactions in your Instagram comments. The largest image-sharing network in the world attracts over a billion users, so it’s impossible to avoid harsh comments and angry feedback every once in a while.

After all, no one is perfect, and your company will not be able to deliver flawless products or services 100% of the time. Negative reactions are normal, but you have to pay attention and answer each inquiry with all due attention and delicacy. In this post, we will show you nine ways to deal with negativity in your Instagram comments.

Basic types of Instagram commentators

Before we present you with the list of social media tips, we want to explain the differences between certain types of comments. Generally speaking, every comment you see on Instagram can be added to one of the following categories:

Valid complaints:

The vast majority of users’ comments are relatively meaningful and worth answering. Legitimate complaints cover everything from product malfunctioning to poor consumer experiences, so you have to answer such reactions.

Trolls:

The second category is much rarer, but you can still see it all the time on Instagram. By definition, a troll is a person who starts quarrels or upsets people on the Internet to distract and sow discord by posting inflammatory, digressive, or off-topic messages for personal amusement or a specific gain.

How you react to Instagram comments depends on the category, so let’s move on to the main chapter of our post.

9 Tips to successfully reply to negative comments on Instagram

Almost every brand has a set of rules dedicated to social media communication, but we selected nine tips that proved to work well in nearly all cases. Here they are:

1. Be quick to spot a negative comment

The first and by far the most crucial suggestion is to keep your eyes open full and identify negative comments as quickly as possible. A typical Instagram user expects you to reply within an hour, so you don’t want to leave him/her waiting for more than that. A quick reaction is already half of the solution because your fans will realize that you are monitoring their comments and answering promptly.

2. Hire a community manager

This tip goes hand in hand with the previous one. Namely, it would help if you appointed a community manager to take care of your Instagram account independently. This is important for three primary reasons:

• A community manager can focus on Instagram communication exclusively.
• He/she will keep the same style of communication and help you build a unique brand voice.
• Community managers also monitor the entire history of interactions with any given follower, so they can always respond appropriately.

3. Analyze the problem from a user’s point of view

As a business owner or sales manager, your first reaction is probably to try and defend the company from negativity, but this is rarely the right way to approach the problem. On the contrary, you should analyze the issue from a user’s point of view and try to understand what makes him/her feel bad about your services. This is the only way to answer appropriately and prevent further Instagram outbursts.

4. Don’t forget to be polite

The sacred rule of community management is to be respectful and answer each comment with all due respect. After all, you don’t want to make an angry customer, even angrier by being rude or aggressive.

Your job is to use a subtle language and address the commentator by his/her name. After that, you should go on writing a helpful comment that takes the conversation into a friendlier path and promises a quick solution.

5. Don’t hesitate to apologize

We mentioned this already, but we have to do it once again – everybody makes mistakes and your customers understand it. Therefore, don’t pretend everything is perfect if you have an angry Instagram user in front of you.

You should apologize instead and do your best to resolve the issue. For example, a product might have a glitch, and your job is to replace it with a flawless item or offer a full refund.

6. Take the conversation somewhere else

Now that you’ve sent the first answer to the annoyed Instagram follower, it is time to take the conversation somewhere else. Some businesses use email to continue their discussions, but we strongly recommend you to utilize live chat for this purpose.

It’s a much more convenient tactic because Instagram users know the conversation will run quickly and smoothly. This is where you’ll have to discuss the details of the problem and solve it in a way that makes your customer happy again.

7. Solve the initial problem

One angry Instagram fan is not a problem, but what if you have to deal with dozens or even hundreds of similar cases? The main idea is to prevent further damage by solving the initial problem that had caused a negative reaction in the first place.

If one of your popular services is malfunctioning, make sure to eliminate bugs and make the service fully functional once again. The same goes for every other problem, so do your best to identify it quickly and solve it as soon as possible.

8. Ignore trolls

We already explained to you that Instagram trolls are individuals who share extremely harmful and provoking messages for no important reason at all. If you (and everybody else) can see clearly that a given comment comes from a troll, you are free to ignore it. This is the only exception in community management as you are supposed to reply to all the other comments.

9. Delete inappropriate comments

• Spammers or scammers
• Observations based on hate speech
• Sexually explicit content
• Violent outbursts

The bottom line

If you are running an Instagram business page with lots of followers, you are going to face negative reactions more often than not. It’s a natural part of the social media game, but the way you respond to users’ comments will have a substantial impact on your digital reputation.

In this article, we explained to you the nine most practical ways to deal with negativity in your Instagram blog comments. Have you ever faced some seriously annoying Instagram commentators? How did you react to their messages? Share your thoughts and questions in the comments – we would be glad to discuss this important topic with you!

About the author

Tobias Foster is a journalist and a blogger who creates content for several writing services online. Tobias is also a content contributor at the dissertation service and assignment writing help agency. He is the father of two kids and a passionate traveller.

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