Houston Metro Transit Steps in It

Brendon Hodgson at Hill and Knowlton put up a great post last week about the difficult birth of the Houston Metropolitan Transit Authority’s blog.

Apparently, the bloggers have been offering up a fair amount of corporate-ese press release type talk while the commenters want to talk about real problems they’re facing with transit in Houston. The disconnect is causing quite the maelstrom.

The core lesson in all of this: if your commenters bring up a real issue, don’t try to skirt it. If you’ve posted about making the change from serving your airline’s passenger salted peanuts to granola bars, but your commenters want to talk about how some of your flight attendants were not up to snuff on their last flight, you might want to address the latter issue in a separate post. Ask for more information, acknowledge that you’re concerned about their experience and work towards a solution.

There is room for flexibility and rule-bending in the blogosphere, but when it comes to stonewalling or re-spinning a contentious conversation, the rule is really simple: DON’T. Instead, tackle the issue head on, deal with angry people by acknowledging that their concerns are reasonable and work to close the issue as soon and as amicably as humanly possible.