This is #7 on Chris Brogan’s 100 Blog Topics list, and is part of the 100 Topics Challenge.

This topic hit close to home, in a certain sense, for me. As you probably noticed, the home page for my company is a blog. I did this for a number of reasons, one of them being that I am very interested in what my customers (and potential customers) have to say.

When commenting on a corporate blog, the objective is usually to either voice a complaint, or to compliment the company for the things they are doing right.

In either case, you’ll get the most traction if you do the following:

• Make it specific: give detailed examples
• Make it actionable: if you’re going to criticize, make sure that you also come up with some ideas about how to do things better. If you don’t, you aren’t going to get anywhere. If you are complimenting, write down some ideas for other companies to do things right in the same way.
• Carrot vs Stick: if you need to be negative, don’t be entirely negative. One of the best ways to get great customer service is to be nice. It also helps if you have lots of neat ideas that can help the culprit do things better in future.