A Teachable Moment in Social Media

The other night we presented the first workshop in our Social Media Workshops series; in this workshop we presented an overview of social media, illustrated how it has always been used in society but the tools are changing, showed examples of successful campaigns, and talked about how social media should fit in your overall marketing plan.  As a part of the discussion we stressed that you should address negative comments in a way that is communicative rather than defensive and that you should not delete negative comments but should use them in a way to try to turn them into a positive. The very next day several local residents made disparaging remarks about the workshops in comments on a local newspaper's site, calling out our company by name and accusing us of being paid to present the workshops as a political payback for supporting a new local meals tax.

The truth was that we are presenting the workshops as a community service and are not charging anything for it - not even to cover our expenses - and we have never made public how we voted on the meals tax.  We're doing the workshops because we feel strongly about helping local businesses learn how to compete in the future, and all of a sudden we were being attacked for it in a way that could have damaged our credibility in the community.  Rather than react with anger (though, believe me we felt like it!) we responded with a comment of our own, laying out the facts of the matter, and then let it go.  We didn't allow ourselves to be sucked into an argument with trolls, but we also didn't let false information about our company stand uncorrected.  Our response is below (and I signed my name to the post rather than posting anonymously as the negative commenters did):

On behalf of Glerin, I would like to set the record straight:
1. We were paid zero.
2. We charged zero.
3. We did the workshop as a community service.
4. We spent hours preparing something tailored to this group.
5. A staff member made a trip from Richmond specifically to participate - at our cost.
6. We did not develop the website referred to above and have no clue who did. (note - the commenter had stated that we developed a pro-meals tax website)

I'm sorry you didn't join us last night but the participants all expressed appreciation - which makes it all worthwhile to us.

Due to the overwhelming response we are scheduling 2 sessions next month, 1/23 and 1/24, for an in-depth look at how companies and non-profits can use Facebook most effectively. You're welcome to join us - free of charge, of course

You see that we set the record straight but also followed it up by reaching out to the negative commenters; no doubt it meant nothing to them because some people just like to complain, but anyone else who reads the comments will not be left to wonder what the truth is.  They know straight from us that we were not being paid as a political payback, and we have protected our reputation. While it's irrelevant what the trolls think, we do care what responsible citizens think and we have a real-life example to share with the class next month.