It has traditionally been said that there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Recently I’ve been wondering if it’s the same online with customer service and opinion.

There are loads of stats on this subject, but one I particularly like is from the JC Williams Group: 91% of people say consumer content is the number-one aid in purchasing decisions. But is the sentiment of that content negative or positive? And does it matter either way?

Last month, a woman I follow on Twitter named Sharon Smith (who’s married to Kieron Smith of The Book Depository) had a run-in with comedian Frankie Boyle during one of his shows. Boyle made a joke about people with Down’s Syndrome and the Smiths – who have a daughter with Down’s – were obviously offended.

Before Sharon started going on about it on Twitter, I’d never heard of Frankie Boyle, but the incident caused me to do some research, watch a couple of his YouTube clips, read some articles and summarise that, as long as he wasn’t offending you personally, he was funny. The situation also changed my mindset about negative sentiment.

So bad reviews or experiences of other people aren’t necessarily a bad thing, especially if the type of internet user who researches online is savvy enough to take the opinions of others with a pinch of salt. However, there are still many companies scared of critical reviews and social media agencies are making a killing by making those big, scary reviews ‘go away’. But are brands doing themselves a disservice by trying to turn all negative sentiment into a positive? Are they wasting money fighting something that doesn’t actually cause any damage?

We live in a performing-on-the-internet world, where every photo of a night out ends up on Facebook and every vaguely amusing thought finds pride of place on Twitter. If a person has a beef with a company, then it’s natural they’ll gripe about it online, and it’s becoming standard that as soon as there’s a public complaint about a company, a representative tries to tidy it up. You can almost set your watch by it. Yet unless the person spewing negativity about your company on the web can be considered a) sane, and b) influential with peers, it’s probably not worth following it up or trying to better it. That’s not to say that a company should ever take pride in failing to provide decent customer service, but why spend unlimited resources on appeasing every single person on the web with an issue?

There aren’t any concrete facts to prove that a couple of pessimistic tweets or blog posts can damage a business, and there’s an argument that the more brand awareness it creates the better. Listening to your customers – the good, the bad and the ugly – and making change from the inside can have a lasting positive effect. Can wasting time and resources creating more positive sentiment do the same?

This column originally appeared in New Media Age magazine.