Dealing with Negative Comments

             In Guy Kawasaki’s book, "The Art of Social Media," he covers many topics of use to us as young professionals living in a social media driven world. One of the most helpful and interesting topics I’ve read about thus far is “How to Respond to Comments.” In a world filled with social media, there’s always going to be a few people out there that disagree with you. This is to be expected when you post anything online from a Facebook post, to an Instagram photo or even a blog post. There is always a chance that someone will have something negative to say. Here are some of the most important points I took from this chapter.

             The first tip to responding to these comments and dealing with them professionally is finding them in the first place. Something we learned about in class about Google is that you can set up a search notification on your name or a certain topic, but Kawasaki mentions doing this on twitter specifically. This allows him to set up any alert if someone is commenting or talking about him or his work. This could be useful to anyone starting a new blog, such as ourselves, to see what kind of social media traffic we are getting, and we can recognize that.

            Another useful tip that Kawasaki gives is to consider the whole audience. He makes a good point that you aren’t sending an email to someone. This post is public for anyone to see and I think often times we forget how public our social media truly is. If we get comments saying negative things or people expressing the opposite opinion that you have to deal with them professionally and realize you put your opinion out there. Another point that Kawasaki gives to go along with this is assuming people are good until proven wrong. If someone tries to pose a different opinion, it doesn’t automatically mean they want to fight about the subject at hand. They may want to learn more about the subject and a different viewpoint. This is an opportunity to educated rather than aggravate.

            Agreeing to disagree is a point that I think we often forget about and I’m glad Kawasaki touched on this. Our pride seems to grow when we are behind a screen and often times things will be said online that wouldn’t be in person. Agreeing to disagree shows professionalism on the writer’s part. It also shows that the writer is willing to drop his/her pride and “lose” the argument. The “troll” as Kawasaki calls them, will see it as them winning and you losing but in reality, you just chose your fight and realized that one wasn’t worth it.

            There are many ways to handle negative response on social media. Things can simmer out as fast as they started, or they can really blow up depending on how the writer handles the situation. There is no way to avoid negative comments on the internet because there will always be people with different opinions. Seeing as you cannot avoid these, it is best to handle things as professionally as possible. We all let certain things get to our heads and I’ve had my fair share of arguments just for the sake of arguing, but if you find yourself in this situation, knowing you can’t reason with this person and there isn’t an end in sight, Kawasaki’s last piece of advice is to delete the comment and block the user.