Nate Riggs: Social Business Strategies; communication, social web strategies, & passion in Columbus, Ohio.

Thank you Walter and Juli - this has made the post. Great ideas from you guys. I don't think there's going to be a definite right or wrong answer that comes from this discussion, but the perspectives shared are all valuable. End of day, each situation is different and will require a different solution. But thank you for sharing your thoughts here! :)

First of all, if the management is not good in handling the well-being of their employees, thing like this will come. But if the management is not it fault, then they have to play the game of the "aggrieved" employee. The business owner must defend himself in the same medium.

Just my opinion. :-)

I agree with you, Nate, that burying negative comments down a forum can result in shifting energy into a more positive direction. That is a great idea that any small business owner should be able to accomplish with relative ease.

I think we are discussing strategy for two entirely different types of scenarios, though. My recommendations were given under the assumption that we are focused on a small business with individual employees perpetuating negative/ false statements. Your comments suggest that you are more concerned with more organized groups of disgruntled employees working in concert under a forum/ site to undermine the image of a larger organization. This requires an entirely different strategy, although I still caution against direct confrontation. If a business owner is faced with an organized image attack by a group, then legal council should steer the path. Mediation with equal representation is probably appropriate, and (in some cases) the business does have leg recourse for defamatory remarks.

I do agree that the Google search rankings have become a leading (albeit not necessarily accurate) tool for consumer decision- making, and that control should be exercised in positioning the brand with “their best foot forward.” That being said, a company cannot bury a poor reputation with mediation and litigation. Key organizational leaders should be aware that, at some point, perception is reality and perhaps there are fundamental practices within the organization that need to be addressed at their root before the forums will cool off.

I agree that transparency breeds trust, but it should be carefully exercised with sound business acumen. That includes protecting the business owner from catapulting themselves from an online forum into the courtroom. So, to answer your question- yes, I do think that even a well-intended olive branch can, unfortunately, land a business owner in legal danger.

That is not to say that I would apply this strategy to a customer-driven forum. That requires the precisely the good faith attempt and urgency that you have suggested.

As an HR professional, I agree and disagree with some of your opinions, Nate.

Competent business owners and HR professionals will already be addressing employee grievance issues within the scope of their normal responsibilities, and, therefore, should have a good handle on the nuances of each unique employee situation. Unfortunately, conflict management and mediation does not always suffice; termination of employment is sometime the only (and most appropriate) solution. Not all employment relationships end on amiable grounds, and I agree with you that employees and business owners should always explore every viable solution before termination is recommended.

I would, however, caution employers and business owners against directly responding to social media slander. Often, these employees are hoping that make that fatal misstep, landing you or your company in a legal battle over slander and defamation. There are some relatively easy, non-confrontational solutions to helping businesses in this technological age to managing their social image without potentially falling into a legal trap.

One option is to contact the moderator/ manager of the site and request that the defamatory post (or portions thereof) be removed. You may even be able to just flag it as inappropriate and move on with your day. Craigslist, for example, has been hard-hit with these types of comments and employers can typically take care of these issues with relative ease.

It may be an issue of strategic planning in setting up your social network, so that all posts must be approved by the group's creator (Facebook, for example), or it is designated as a members-only page. Just be sure you maintain post and requests often! This may be too tedious for a larger company, but for a smaller business, it may offer the easiest solution to managing their online reputation.

Finally, you can simply ignore these types of statements. Many disgruntled employees simply want the satisfaction of knowing that you have inconvenienced, irritated or angered their former employer with their accusations. Sometimes, the best solution is to allow the post to sit (quiet, unanswered, unnoticed) and you can watch (with satisfaction!) as it becomes old news and eventually disappears. After all, one negative statement will surely not jeopardize the reputation of a legally abiding and ethically sound organization.

Parting words-every situation is different and what works for one company may be absolutely inappropriate for another, so my best advice is that a business owner should always have a savvy HR professional and competent legal team that can be called on to provide input for these types of (increasingly common) situations.

Social media slander by CURRENT employees, however, is a matter we can debate in future discussions!

Thanks for the comment Juli. You share a lot of great info and ideas here. Businesses can always contact third party forums and sites to dispute any false and offensive claims. I've seen this work in the past. There's also ethical strategies for burying negative comments pages down in a forum, by rallying customers and employees to share positive messages in their own circles.

Still, one of the problems angry people wielding sites Yelp-like sites lies in the search engines. If the forum is large enough, businesses run a risk of having negative and even unfounded comments indexed by Google brand-name searches. Anymore, Google search rankings deliver the very first brand impression. And to couple that, humans are getting shorter attention spans. When a forum comment is displayed as a search result, the META data copy will typically contain enough language to create an impression. That can cause problems if a business depends on leads from the internet for customers.

Because of that, I think that all negative commentators need addressed at least once. Transparency breeds trust. Even if that reply is only to try and invite the conversation to happen offline, it shows that the business has made a good faith effort to welcome conversation and attempt to solve a problem. But again, just opinion here.

Do you think responding in that fashion would put a business owner in legal danger?