I came across this MediaPost article today on what to do when social media "attacks."

Apparently the "media mavens" surveyed in the report mentioned came up with the following as "counter-strategies" when advertisers come across negative comments in social media:

As one might expect, there is no magic bullet for countering negative comments: the two most popular responses were directly engaging the commenter, a tactic used by 47% of social media advertisers surveyed, and improving the quality of products or services being advertised, according to 33% of respondents.

Aside from these commonsensical but labor-intensive propositions, what other short-term fixes can online advertisers employ in dealing with negative comments? One strategy is neutralizing the negative comment, either by encouraging other consumers to leave positive comments (24%) or attempting to get the content removed by the publisher or blogger (14%).

You know what? Social media might still be shiny and new to some (ok, a lot of) folk, but there's nothing new about being smart about your communication. And if advertisers are serious about growing their customer bases, they shouldn't be looking for "short-term fixes" any way.

Why not just do it the old-fashioned way - by putting out a good service or product to begin with? Want to 21st century it up? Use the new SM channels to listen, engage and respond.

I mean, seriously. You can't stumble upon anything referencing social media and not stumble upon those words.

Good grief, as Charlie Brown would say.