Learning More About Your Commenters

Under normal conditions, as you use your listening tools, you track your commenters in general terms (although it can be really useful to identify your biggest fans). In those circumstances, you don’t need to research every commenter. Now, however, you need to learn all you can about the people commenting. This gives you a better context in which to

Understand what’s going on

Make an educated guess about what these people want from the interaction

It’s also really important for you to find out how broad a network your commenters have and on which social networks they’re most popular. Routinely listen across relevant channels for words like “hate,” “sucks,” “bad,” “not working,” and so on, in conjunction with your brand name. Google Alerts can be very handy for setting up these routine searches. (For more on Google Alerts, see Chapter 7.) You should also track who is linking to your site and read that person’s blog posts and articles. When you locate your commenter, take a few moments to figure out what’s going on. Carefully read the content, whether it’s a tweet or a long blog post, and try to understand the commenter’s point of view.

Approach commenters in good faith, with the intention of helping them. If you discover that your commenters aren’t acting in good faith (in other words, if you have trollers) remain calm, and don’t let them get to you emotionally.

Do you have a relationship with that person? Is he your brand’s customer? The answers to these questions affect how you should respond. Your decisions get a little trickier when your commenter turns out to be

An anonymous profile: I mean someone who isn’t logged in or who isn’t using any sort of traceable name or ID, not Anonymous, the hacker group. (That would definitely qualify as a full-on social media crisis.)

An obviously fake profile: When people use obviously fake profiles they aren’t typically dealing honestly with your brand. Spotting a fake profile can be very difficult and time consuming. You need to cross reference that social profile with others using that name, follow up with links, and look up key phrases they use in order to spot a pattern online. You can use the following information to help you spot a fake Facebook profile, but please remember that these are just guidelines Questionable profiles can often be legitimate. Use your best judgment. You can also use these guidelines to assess profiles you encounter on other social networks.

• 97% of fake profiles use women’s names (58% of those claimed to be interested in both men and women).

• 15% of regular profiles have never posted status updates, but 43% of fake profiles have never updated their Facebook statuses.

• Regular profiles tag (link the image to another user on Facebook) an average of one person for every four photos posted. Fake profiles average 136 tags for every four photos uploaded!

• Regular profiles average about 130 friends, whereas fake profiles average about 726 friends.

One of a set of multiple profiles: The escalating “conversation” can be the product of a single commenter using a number of different names.

Part of an echo chamber: An echo chamber exists when a person repeats an erroneous point (or set of points) made by another source, often a source with some degree of reliability. Often the commenter is a well-meaning person simply spreading someone else’s message. But because he’s making a point he believes comes from an authoritative source, he gains confidence — even though he’s wrong — and won’t back down easily. Typical echo-chamber comments tend to include

• Bullying or just plain mean comments

• Accusations or condemnations of the actions of others

• Personal attacks

• Unreasonable demands

• Well-meaning people spreading somebody else’s message

Dealing with online echo chambers

Online echo chambers can impose chilling effects on any individual brave enough to post contradictory opinions. Insults and accusations fly quickly.

The same dynamic is sometimes at work when established thought leaders in the same industry work to promote one another. It’s great to have a group of online colleagues/competitors that you respect, but when the people in that group start following each other blindly and carelessly repeating messages, this can quickly become an echo chamber. When such people find an erroneous point they want to make and decide to “spread the word online,” it’s difficult for anyone to correct them. And worse, all this attention can drive up Google ratings for the conversation (because it’s so interesting and juicy) and bring fresh traffic right to you when you appear to be at a terrible disadvantage.

When the echo chamber “flames” on your blog, you can choose to turn off comments, but that can backfire if your group is determined and has sites and audiences of their own to galvanize.

Often, echo-chamber commenters are just riding a bandwagon and simply trying to get a rise out of you. In most cases, you can ruin their fun simply by keeping your cool. The best thing you can do is to take decisive action, even as you take the high road. State your case sensitively and in clear terms. Respond only to legitimate questions. If necessary, announce a follow-up post as soon as possible to discuss the issue further (and intelligently). Time is of the essence when you’re dealing with an escalating issue online.

Determining motivations

As you are doing your homework to check out your more prominent commenters in this escalating situation, ask yourself what may be motivating the main people involved. Most often, people will start agitating online in order to

Get attention: Trolls derive a sense of power from getting negative attention even.

Driving traffic back to their blog: This is a sneaky tactic used by many bloggers interested in stealing attention from one conversation in order to draw attention to themselves and their blog. If this becomes a routine problem, I suggest modifying your commenting system’s settings so that people can’t leave links or share videos on your site. This cleans things up nicely and won’t subject you to derision, because every blogger should know that this is a questionable tactic anyway.

Being a sneaky competitor: Sometimes competitors poke around just to discover perceived weak spots in your customer service or expertise.

Desiring some good old-fashioned customer service: Serve it up in style and demonstrate that they matter.

Wanting more information about your service or product: Depending on the size of your organization, you need to either handle this yourself by referring them to more informative resources that they can read/watch on their own time, or have someone in the sales department contact them via the same medium they contacted you on. In other words, if they contacted you via Twitter, answer via Twitter.

Expressing concern about a mounting issue: Definitely let them know that you are there, you’re listening, and tell them what’s being done about the issue and that you will publish updates if they want to check back with you. Again, make sure it’s the same medium so that you aren’t asking somebody to migrate the issue over to somewhere else. Besides, it’s more considerate to your visitor to make it more convenient.

Venting outrage over a current event involving your brand or industry: This is a situation where you may want to start thumbing your way over to Chapter 16, where I tell you about crisis communications. But if there are only a handful of hot comments or updates, then it probably isn’t time to call in reinforcements. Sensitively ask them what they want to see done about the issue. This will help take the guesswork out of you understanding where they’re coming from.

Getting even: Sometimes a disgruntled employee (even a former one) can be a terrible source of angst online for your brand. These people will normally post via fake or anonymous profiles to cloak their true identities so they can avoid legal trouble. If this person (or group of people) is posting regularly and doesn’t respond to reasonable discourse, your best bet is to hire an online security expert who can determine who is actually behind the attacks and how to legally confront them once unmasked.

Beware of irrelevant, emotional, “oh, pity me” appeals (citing special circumstances that sound illegitimate and can’t be verified) urging you to bend the rules for them or give them something special, such as your extra time.