It's business, not personal

Rudeness. How to handle someone who's rude on social media
This is an interesting area as a lot of people seem to think that because they can use any name, no one will know who they are, but it simply isn't true. I know of one case where someone was beyond rude, and not only was he tracked down, he was stupid enough to post personal details which made it easier to confirm who it was. We're not talking about the police or private investigators or some clever IT people here either. It was just a bunch of kids annoyed that a friend had been insulted. Basically its very easy to find them is what I'm saying here.

So, a few people were very rude to me, but also very stupid. I gave them the chance to back down, they didn't want to because they were too committed to the cause, and were made to look stupid(including an MP, and I really enjoyed that).  Well they accepted that, or at least one of them has, and they apologised.  A couple of others have sort of jumped on the band wago while using it to make digs at me. So now I have a decision to make.

Do I accept the apology or not? I do want to accept the first apology, I think it was genuine and deserves respect. The others............ I don't respect them, they can't say it honestly, so I feel reluctant to acknowledge it, but I want us to take the moral high ground.

I think the problem is that although its business, social media is personal. It's not me they hate, or at least not directly, they hate what I represent, in this respect, they hate the idea of change. But the hate is directed at me, and as I represent the 'whole' on social media, the hate is sometimes directed at me alone. I've been hated by people before and you know what, by deal. I don't care about their opinion. There's a saying that's been doing the rounds online for a few weeks and it really is true, 'a tiger isn't concerned with the opinions of sheep'.

So if you are getting hate directed at you, by trolls or whoever, ask yourself this, do you really care? Who is this person to you? Unless it's someone who's opinion you respect, or someone you care about, fuck 'em!

Just don't do it literally, then they'd really hate you.

Be wrong, lie or be bland?

Sometimes in social media something happens that makes you frown, then turns it upside down. In this case something happened, all normal, nothing special, just routine business. But there's a little group of people who really hate what is happening with my work (this is nothing bad btw, it's about making things better. In this case if I asked you how we worked, you would be so very wrong, but as for how we will, you've just described it).

So this routine thing, someone told someone, who told someone, and the facts became not just a little wrong, but so wrong that it wasn't recognisable, but this group were positive it was true. Even when the people who were there told them they were wrong, they couldn't believe it. 'You mean the emperor is naked? Don't be stupid, I know, I know, I know!'  They are so entrenched in their view they really can't see the wood for the trees. Right now they are arguing with someone online about it, and he is even saying why I will rarely bother to talk to them. Quite simply, they just aren't worth the effort.

And this is my point for social media people, you will always get idiots who think if they shout, you must listen.  Well I've never seen any PC, Mac, smart phone, tablet or any device to access social media without a mute button. If I want to, I can ignore them very easily. It's also worth remembering that on social media, you can see everything, they can never hide what they say.

If you get a lot of mentions on twitter, you might think it means something, means you're making waves. But if it's the same people retweeting and retweeting again, and again, what are you achieving? It's not a lot of mentions, you're shouting in a sound proofed room.

But if you open a window and try to shout outside, the first thing you must do is the very thing that every journalist does, check your facts. The only thing worse in journalism than being wrong is to lie (or steal someone's byline, but that's another story).  Both amount to the same thing as soon as you've done either, your credibility means nothing. Everything you say after is called into question because you were wrong. If you lie about being wrong, then you just look stupid.

So my main point here is this, if you run social media accounts for your company, always tell the truth. No one will die if you tell the truth. If you don't want to tell the truth, say nothing.

Would you rather be bland or wrong?