In this 5-minute read:
- Why consumers comment on Instagram
- What to do about negative comments on Instagram
- How to remove negative comments on Instagram
Dealing with comments on social media isn’t always fun, especially when those less than satisfied customers seem to make it their mission to ruin your online reputation.
Attract new customers and keep them loyal with reputation management software. Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!
We’re here to make that task a little easier. Throughout this article, we’ll walk you through best practices for dealing with negative comments on your business’s Instagram posts and how (and when) you can delete those comments.
First, let’s provide a quick overview of commenting on Instagram.
Why consumers comment on Instagram
Like most social platforms, Instagram allows its users to comment on their own and others’ posts. Within the confines of Instagram’s use policies, people can say whatever they want in a comment on any posts that they follow, including your brand.
This is awesome when your customers are happy about their experience with your company and share all the feels on your Instagram posts, but that isn’t always the case.
Sometimes a customer has a bad day or someone on your team messed up. So they express these less-than-warm-fuzzy feelings the way everyone does in the 21st century: publicly on social media.
As much you may dread these occurrences, your customers just want to be heard. They want to feel that their opinion is valued and that someone paid attention to them, particularly when they’ve had a bad experience.
And that brings us to the next point. How should you deal with negative comments on your Instagram posts?
What should you do about negative comments on Instagram?
Don’t worry, we will walk you through the proper approach to deleting your negative Instagram comments. But before you get to that point, you need to think about a couple of things first.
Depending on the type of business you run, there are multiple ways you can deal with negative comments on Instagram. But you should always (and we mean ALWAYS) respond to negative comments that come across your feed.
Going back to the point that your customer just wants to be heard, you should always take the time to respond to their comment within a 24-hour period (and much sooner than that when possible).
How you respond to those comments and deal with them after that involves some nuances, depending on your business type.
For example, if you run a medical practice and have a disgruntled patient leaving bad comments on an Instagram post, you’re going to want to handle that a lot more delicately than you would if you run a retail sales business.
Respond professionally and reach out to resolve legitimate complaints
The main option: taking care to show your professionalism and let your customer know that you hear them and wish to resolve the issue fully. Craft an appropriate response and comment your reply.
NOTE: Always take the high road, even if you feel hurt or unfairly accused in a review or comment. Remember, other current and potential customers are reading both the negative comments and your responses to them, and will make assumptions based on your approach.
Find more helpful tips in this article: How to respond to negative reviews
After you post a “high road” response (along the lines of “We’re so sorry you had a bad experience! We work hard to make sure all of our customers are satisfied. Please contact us privately so we may resolve the issue”), you should take that one step further and actually follow up with your customer to make sure their issue was resolved, especially if there is any fault on your end. Own up to it and help your customer out.
When the problem has been resolved, your customer may update their comment or remove it all together. If they don’t, but you have done your part to try and remedy the situation, at that point is when you can remove a negative review.
Insert your personality into your comments
Another option for dealing with and responding to negative commenters is by meeting them on their level–all in good taste of course.
One example that many of us are familiar with is Wendy’s. They get saucy in their responses to commenters and their followers love it!
Obviously, you don’t want to upset your customers, but if your brand is one that allows you to insert some personality into your comments, then keep up with your image and do that.
If there is a big problem and it’s not just a spammy comment, then reach out to the customer and work to resolve the problem still. Just have a little fun in the comments section when the appropriate opportunity arises.
How to delete comments on your own Instagram posts
Okay, let’s say you did work with your customer to resolve the problem and you’ve responded to the comment promptly. Now may be the appropriate time to remove an Instagram comment that could be potentially harmful to your brand.
You always want to make sure that you provide some public evidence first to show that you care about your customers’ experiences and want to fix any problems that arise.
But once that’s done, you may wish to delete the comment, particularly if you have resolved the concern but the customer elected not to modify or delete their negative post.
The beauty of Instagram is that you can delete any comments that show up on your own posts. (We’ll talk about what to do on posts you don’t own shortly.)
To delete a comment on Instagram, all you need to do is select the “more options” icon, symbolized by three dots. And then click “Delete.” This will automatically delete the comment.
How to deal with negative Instagram posts made by others
If someone does mention your brand or business in a negative comment on their own Instagram post, you won’t be able to delete their post (of course), but you can report it by clicking the same three-dot “more options” menu. However, it will only be removed if it goes against Instagram’s policies.
The next best option when someone mentions you in a negative way is to post a witty and/or helpful reply to their post, and then reach out to them personally with an offer to resolve their issue, and ask them to remove the content.
Improve your online reputation with review management software
You can’t control what people post online. And sometimes that can have a large impact on your business.
Take heart, though, because getting regular “fresh” reviews and replying to your reviews regularly has been shown in Womply’s studies to have a greater impact on small business revenue than simply maintaining a 5-star rating.
One thing you can do is help those happy customers balance out the negative by working to earn consistent positive reviews. This helps you stay on top of your online reputation amidst all of the people that are just having a bad day.
With Womply’s reputation management software, you can easily manage all your online reviews on multiple review sites from one simple dashboard. You can even set up automated responses (if you choose this option) to make the process as easy as possible.
Learn more, plus get free reputation monitoring and customer insights when you sign up for Womply Free!