Part of communicating effectively about yourself is responding to criticism. Of course you need to do it in appropriate ways. Another pet peeve of mine (And I do tend to have a lot of them, don’t I? Sorry, blogging is just a nice way to get them out of my system. It means my wife doesn’t have to listen to me complain as much.) is when organizations respond to criticism effectively, but don’t use all the tools at their disposal.

JetBlue was the example I gave yesterday with their massive delays and response that didn’t quite filter through all their channels.

Another good example is (Product) Red. Last week a critical Ad Age article tore into (Product) Red the same time as a critical protest site was launched. Not a good week. And Red certainly responded. Bobby Shriver responded on the Red web site. He’s also been talking to the media.

But what’s the word on the official (Product) Red blog? Not much.

The closest they come to addressing the whole issue is this entry re-explaining how Red works. It’s always good to repeat yourself in new ways, so no harm with this entry. But why not address the controversy head-on? Heck, Bobby Shriver is already saying all the things you need to, so all you really have to do is link to what he said.

Blogging is a conversation. But if you ignore what other people are saying then blogging reverts back to an old media format where all you do is talk. And eventually your audience starts ignoring you.

My guess is they’re following the philosophy of ignore the critics and they’ll go away. If you don’t acknowledge them, if you don’t link to them, nobody else will know and you can just move on. But again, it’s an old media approach. People already know. And now they’re looking to your communications piece for a response. So where is it? If you’re right, if the critics have no argument, then you have nothing to fear in responding. I’m not saying you need to respond to every Joe Internet who responds, but when a major industry publication criticizes you, you need to answer the charges.

And when your organization responds to the critics, get that response out there. Put it on your blog. That’s what it’s there for.