Do you ever experience those moments of doubt, where for just a millisecond you wonder if the expert advice you’re giving just might not work for the listening party?  I know I do, although it’s not always easy to admit, especially when you want others to believe in you.

It’s even harder when you’re representing a product, service, or even an apartment community.

According to a Global Online Shopping Report by The Nielsen Company, in North America 68% of online consumers are more likely to share a negative rather than a positive product experience online.  Of course, I think we all already knew that there are more negative reviews written than positive ones, but there are some hard stats for you.

Specific to the multifamily industry, apartment communities are finding the need to quickly adapt to the age of social media (despite the internet having been a major player across the board for quite some time now).  Twitter, Facebook, and sites like ApartmentRatings.com are changing the game of leasing and customer service because word of mouth is no longer restricted to face-to-face conversations and telephones.  Social media opens up reviews and comments about properties to the entire world.

So if someone has a negative experience at your property, it’s more likely to end up online than the positive experience they had yesterday.  And that’s where those moments of doubt come into play.  Despite knowing that you have a great property and great on-site staff, it’s hard to swallow negative feedback, and for just a millisecond you might question that greatness.

DON’T.  Now, that doesn’t mean ignore negative feedback and don’t respond to unhappy residents.  In fact, just the opposite!  Jen Piccotti discusses some great ways to deal with negative feedback in her blog post Online Reputation Management Begins Onsite.

But I want to take this in a different direction, and encourage you to put yourself out there on the internet.  *gasp*

If you don’t have a Twitter account, get one.  No Facebook page for your property?  Sign up!  Think that providing an online community portal for residents to communicate on is a bad idea?  Think again.  Besides just opening up the opportunity to address negative feedback, you are also opening up the opportunity for happy residents to share their experiences.

I know, I know, it’s like spotting an endangered species in the wild.  But if there is no forest to begin with, then your chances are nil.

For the past three months I’ve been working with ActiveBuilding clients both old and new to make sure that they are getting the most out of our community portal, and sometimes even I wonder how valid my advice is since I don’t work onsite at an apartment community.  But every time I hear about positive feedback the onsite teams get from their residents, that sense of doubt washes away.

The moral of the story?  The good, the bad, and the ugly are a packaged deal – and the good outweighs the bad and the ugly by a landslide.

What POSITIVE feedback has your property / business received online that made it worth wading through the bad and ugly comments?

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