You\’ve heard the saying about not being able to fool all the people all the time.
You probably also know then that you can\’t please all the people all the time too.
It\’s an impossibility. It doesn\’t matter how good your content, how wonderful your website or what a great job you do, you\’re always going to get people who write in and complain.
They\’ll leave comments that say your post was garbage. They\’ll complain that they wrote in with a question and five minutes later are still waiting for an answer. They\’ll insist that you remove all the ads and affiliate links from your Web pages because they get in the way of their browsing.
In short, they don\’t like you and they want you to know.
It\’s going to happen and as your site grows, it\’s going to happen more often.
The complaints themselves aren\’t important. What is important is how you deal with them.
If a complaint is right and demands action, then move fast to correct the mistake.
That\’s happened to me more times than I like to remember. I\’ve promoted free downloads that turned out not to be free and placed links in emails that didn\’t work.
It happens. We\’re all human. When it happens to you – and it will happen to you – apologize and make amends as quickly as you can. Most people will understand.
You should also be humble enough to learn. There\’s nothing wrong with making mistakes, but there\’s a lot wrong with making the same mistake four times. A complainer is a mentor pointing out something you don\’t know, so take the lesson, add it to your store of knowledge and feel grateful that you\’re continuing to learn and grow.
And finally, you can do nothing.
If the complainer is being nit-picky, silly or just plain wrong, be big enough to shrug them off and keep going. In fact, you can treat it as a compliment. We all see poor sites every day but we only complain about the ones we think are important.
Get a vindictive complaint then and you might be able to give yourself a pat on the back: you\’re important enough to moan about.