Managing social media sites can be a minefield for businesses. Get it right for months and months and you might start to wonder does anyone even notice. Get it wrong and you might start to feel like you’re the centre of all of the internet’s frivolous hate (which is in no short supply).

The list of social media disasters is a long and growing one. What’s intended as a shot in the arm for the brand can soon turn to a shot directly in the foot as one poorly judged post can see a brand’s image take a heavy battering with each additional share. A carefully crafted social media campaign can fall apart as quick as a tweet can travel around the world.

When a complaint comes to a business on social media it can help, a lot, if you know how best to get yourself out of a tricky spot, and do it with the minimum fuss. Try to fix it with the wrong approach and you might just be multiplying your problems. Recently Newstalk reported on a social media disaster for British Airways, when a disgruntled customer by the name of Hasan Sayed (@HVSVN) was so annoyed by the airline's failure to properly respond to complaints about his father's luggage that he paid for promotional tweets to criticise the airline. His approach finally got their attention as the bad publicity piled up for the airline, and it further proved that, even for the biggest companies, failure to properly deal with a social media complaint can have serious knock on effects.

American marketing company Pardot have put together a quick guide to identifying the main types of “social media complainers” and how businesses can best deal with them to keep their social media campaigns ticking along and best interact with their customers.

The 5 types of complainer range from the Meek Customer to the Chronic Complainer and each one has a different approach to their grievances and an require a different response to their complaint. Have Pardot got it right? If you are a business owner using social media would you use this guide? And, let's be honest here, which one of the 5 complainers are you are you?

Let us know in the comments below.