Negative Press and How to deal with it?

Negative Press is when your site or business gets mention but not for the great job you did, but this type of press basically identifies the mistakes in your business model, or problems with your website. Alot of people take it as insult when they get negative press. They often get angry at the person who writes bad about their website, but I think differently, and I would like to share why I think that Negative Press is sometimes good.

I was inspired to write this article because I have seen alot of changes in my business model as I grew and got more experienced. I remember when I first started, I could not stand any negative press. How dare you say something about my website which I put so much work in? But you have to learn how to take criticism. Only because it is going to make your site the best. Half the times, people who were jealous of me will point out mistakes on my website, but everytime I will fix it, and get a more stronger grip on my audience whereas no one was pointing out their mistake. Did you ever hear people say that sometimes when you look at your work for too long, you can’t find your errors, so it is better to have someone else proof read it. This is exactly what it is. Your users, competitors, and other people will find errors on your site especially the ones you will miss. So it is a good thing when someone report an error.

I got pointed by Bloggingtips about having a bad 404 page. Well, I got an honest opinion and I am glad that I did because I went right away and fixed it. At the end of the day, my blog was better than it was yesterday. Isn’t thats the ultimate goal. Vision for success, Keep improving every day. It was after all negative press that made me realize that.

Negative Press increases traffic. These tricks are often used as link-bait when people talk about you and give you negative press, and you become a big icon in the industry. Joel Comm did when he screwed up with his e-book, but do you understand how many people who didn’t know about his book actually went and saw it. In the end, I really think did he really purposely did it to get some negative press? Who knows, but you best believe that such things will increase your traffic.

But now you are wondering, these people who are coming to your site thinking it is a bad site will not come again. Wait a minute, they will definately come back again especially if you change/fix your mistakes because that will give the users an impression that you really care about your website, and how active this site is. I mean now I am still getting hits from that post about bad 404 pages, and most people can see the 404 page is good and now Balkhis traffic/subscribers has increased now I don’t know whether this was natural or due to that, but this is just a theory. But you have to take yourself in account what will you do if you see that somesite is a bad example, and you go visit that site and see that they have fixed the issue. I know I would stay at the site and check some more stuff out to see if I am interested or not.

Well now that you see why I think the other way about negative press, I think you guys should learn how to respond to it as well. Many webmasters tend to go negatively and start attacking the other person, but that only makes you look like a stuck up peice of sh*t who thinks his product is great. And you are not open to public’s constructive criticism. Instead what you should do is thank the company who reviewed your site and pointed out the errors, and state that you will work on fixing it. Also apologize for any inconvenience that may have caused any of the valuable users. I hope you are one of those who will follow through and actually fix the issue as soon as possible.

Reminds of a great quote: Do the right thing, Do it right, and Do it Right now.

I would like to think what others think on this issue about Negative Press….