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Gone are the days when large corporations could just bury consumer complaints, they have the world wide web to thank for that. If Twitter can help overthrow the Egyptian government, it can certainly take down your business.

It’s time to start taking negative brand mentions seriously, and form a solid strategy for dealing with them in a timely manner. If you aren’t a company like Google, Facebook, or Walmart, the world can do without your services. Depending on the competition level in your niche, one share or tweet can cost you millions, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Just to clarify, this isn’t about keeping everybody happy, just addressing them if they get upset enough to take to the proverbial streets with their battle cry against you. To make things easier, realize people will take the path of least resistance, unless of course you have a serious nut on your hands

. They may go to insane lengths to deal with their issues, like build an entire website devoted to their rants and raves about your company. In most cases though, you’ll find people search for simliar complaints, and piggy back off what is already out there. Which is why staying on top of things is important. It’s much easier to stop a small snowball than an avalanche of negative press.

So stay on top of Google searches related to your brand, and always keep your ears to social networks for negative mentions. Remember that people don’t want to complain, they just want their problem solved. More often than not they don’t even care that the problem gets solved, they just want validation.

So either take a few moments to be interested now, or take hours and possibly days later to figure out how to deal with it later.