Trolls – those discontents who hurl inflammatory, hateful attacks and start pointless arguments online — seek only to cause havoc and undermine a person’s or a company’s hard-won reputation. Once mainly a problem for individuals, trolls are increasingly attacking organizations online. Attempting to reason with them or accommodate them won’t work since they want only to cause mayhem and bring attention to themselves.
They’re different from – and far worse than – disgruntled customers. Irate customers might insult your company and might even desire to start an argument. But at least most remain open to reason and usually just want customer service to promptly resolve their complaint. Trolls are uninterested in solutions. They just want to raise hell.
Here’s advice on how to combat trolls.
Are They Really Trolls?
Separate unhappy customers from trolls first. Some trolls are immediately obvious. Others are not. Assume commenters are customers until you know otherwise. One giveaway: Trolls typically don’t reveal a specific problem. Their provocations may be unrelated to your company and products. To identify trolls, ask the commenter to communicate with you privately via email or direct message. Trolls don’t respond privately since they seek public battles.
Don’t feed the trolls. Don’t fall into their trap by responding – especially with emotional answers. Retorts can damage your brand image. Without food in the form of heated responses, they’ll usually go elsewhere to spew their venom.
“Social media is a public forum, and anything your brand says is a reflection of the business,” Josephine Hardy, director of content and marketing at Acorn, the Influence Company, told Fast Company. “Heated exchanges will not resolve the problem. Flag their comments as inappropriate and monitor comments from other individuals who respond to the troll.”
Usually they don’t have a large social network audience of their own but are relying on your social networks to leverage and amplify the message. “So, don’t give them oxygen, don’t let them use your social media channels to use as a pulpit to scream from and delete them immediately, advises social media expert Jeff Bullas.
Take control when needed. If it’s your platform, you have the right to control content. Feel free to unfriend, block or report to a site administrator if someone is truly abusive, writes Kellie Moeller, president and owner of Salt & Light Consulting Inc.
Protect Your Customers
Protect your audience. Act quickly to stop threats against others. Make it clear that you will not tolerate threats or insults aimed at other followers. Promptly remove abusive comments or push the social media network to block abusers if needed. Including procedures for dealing with trolls in the company’s social media policy and displaying online etiquette on social media channels will let both your staff and commentators know how your company will respond.
H&M Sweden recently failed to act quickly against trolls on Facebook who threatened to rape and murder an H&M customer who had criticized the company, according to Fast Company. Both Facebook and H&M were condemned.
Social Media Listening
Monitoring social media is an essential step for stopping trolls, experts agree. Even in the face of limited resources for a dedicated social media team, small to mid-sized organizations can monitor their social media profiles across all networks with a social media listening service. Most importantly, however, an organization should use staff to monitor multiple times per day all their owned media, including social media accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, Snapchat and Instagram.
Get counsel. Consulting a lawyer may be warranted, depending on the severity of the attack. Harassment is a legal term for trolls who step outside legal boundaries. If someone makes a threat, get legal counsel before responding.
Bottom Line: Trolls seek to wreak havoc with inflammatory, not necessarily sensible, attacks against your organization, its staff and customers. Protecting your company and customers against them requires constant vigilance through social media monitoring, clear policies and a firm stance.
William J. Comcowich founded and served as CEO of CyberAlert LLC, the predecessor of Glean.info. He is currently serving as Interim CEO and member of the Board of Directors. Glean.info provides customized media monitoring, media measurement and analytics solutions across all types of traditional and social media.
