If you run a business, you know you can’t please all the people all the time.

So, it’s safe to assume that someone, at some time, will trash you or your business online for the whole world to see.

That nasty comment could be a blog post, a review, or perhaps a tweet. The comment itself isn’t nearly as important as how you deal with the comment.

In the case of Governor Sam Brownback, he didn’t do a very good job of dealing with it.

If you haven’t read anything about the “Twitter incident,” you can read about it here.

The short version is that Emma Sullivan, an 18 year old high school senior, sent out a tweet while she was on a field trip to the state Capitol that said -

Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him he sucked, in person #heblowsalot.

Now, it’s not the nicest thing to say about someone but come on, the guy’s a politician, of course he sucks (just kidding).

Apparently, the governor’s office monitors the internet for mentions of Brownback and after his people saw the tweet, they called someone at the school district and Emma got ripped a new one by her high school principal.

The principal told Emma that she needed to write an apology to the governor.

After Emma spoke with her sister, a college student, she decided not to write the apology letter and instead they contacted the media. The rest is history.

But, let’s take a look a closer look at this public relations disaster.

• First, Emma had 65 followers on Twitter at the time she sent the tweet (now over 13,000). Not a lot of people would’ve seen this comment if the governor’s office had simply ignored it.

• Second, it’s not a very influential statement. If anyone had seen the tweet, it’s not likely to persuade anyone to oppose the governor. I mean, she said he “sucked” and “he blows a lot.” Not very damaging from an intellectual standpoint.

• Third, does the governor even have a policy in place for responding to online criticism? Granted, he’s a politician, not a business owner, but someone from his office picked up the phone and called someone at the school district to complain about this.

Did the governor authorize it? Was anyone in his office authorized to do that? Have they done it before?

Any contact with the public is a reflection of your business. Make sure your employees know what they can and can’t do.

Negative feedback is actually valuable for a business owner…to an extent. If you start to hear the same complaints over and over again, you need to listen and adjust.

If people keep writing reviews about how the spaghetti in your restaurant is always cold, you better fix it and start serving hot spaghetti…if you want to stay in business.

People that are unsatisfied are much more likely to speak out than those who are satisfied with your products or services. So, for every 100 people that are satisfied and say nothing, there will be a few people that are unsatisfied and complain.

When they do speak out, it’s an opportunity for you to show the world that you’re listening, that you care about their experience and you can respond in a calm, rational manner.

Even if there is no hope of saving the relationship with the person complaining about you, your response will be memorialized online for all to see. If you have a clever, witty response, it could actually win you more customers in the long run.

Don’t waste an opportunity to show the world the true character of your business.