Blogging Unwelcome News

“Breaking bad news to customers is not an easy task,” Susan Berkley admits in zenbusiness.com. To do this in a compassionate and professional manner, she advises, “Give as much as you can about the who, what, when, where, and why,” Take charge, outlining a specific plan of action that you and your company will take, and what actions you recommend customers take.

While agilelaw.com advises never delivering bad news via either a voice mail or email (clients may not be able to reach you right away to ask questions or obtain additional information), a blog post may in fact be the best way to keep all readers informed of general developments which may apply to them. (Customers may also be informed via letter; individual issues should be dealt with off-line.)

Acknowledge the facts rather than sugarcoating the unknown and unknowable, focusing on options for the future, says Jennifer Kahnweiler, Ph.D. “Small people shun responsibility. However, strong peoples shoulder it.” Her five-part grid for organizing a bad-news message:

1. Start on either a positive or neutral note.
2. Elaborate on the current situation or your criteria/reasoning for making the negative decision.
3. State the bad news (as positively as possible).
4. Offer an alternative to meet the person’s goals, when possible.
5. End with a goodwill statement focused on the future.

As is true of newspapers, business blog content writing can balance feature stories with news. In general, the word “news”, when it comes to blog marketing, can mean two entirely different things.  The first type centers around you and your company or practice, with the second type of news relating to your community, your city, your country, even worldwide events. If, as blog writers, we can go right to the heart of any possible customer fears or concerns by addressing negative assumption questions (before they’ve been asked!)  we have the potential to breed understanding and trust.

There’s no question that negative news can have a huge impact on consumers’ opinions of your business, but truth is that the more your business grows, the more difficult it is to escape negative publicity, statuslabs.com admits. The best way to combat the larger potential impacts of negative news coverage is to have a strong online presence. Then,
addressing negative news early on before it grows into a larger story is good advice.

But, it’s when your “bad news” consists, not of a bad review or an accusation, but of an unpalatable fact (you’re discontinuing a favorite product; you’re raising your hourly rates; you’re changing a long-standing policy, etc.), that breaking the news in your blog is going to require digging into your content writing reserves with honesty and skill..