It used to be that trolls were only a concern for billy goats with urgent transpontine business.
The internet, however, has liberated trolls from their dank exile and brought them out into the light, so now any social media marketing professional must ask “how could, or why would, trolls hijack this?” before pressing the campaign launch button.
Durex is one of the latest victims of internet mischief makers. Its online poll inviting was supposed to return a winning city to be covered by it ‘SOS Condoms Service’ emergency condom delivery service. The winner, however, was the conservative Muslim town of Batman, southern Turkey.
I think we can all see how avoidable that was but here are five things I think every one of us should do to manage or pre-empt the trolls when building social media into your marketing.
1) Think like they do – Assemble your team together and brainstorm every imaginable scenario. Don’t be afraid to play Devil’s advocate and get enough heads on it and you’ll at least arrive at the more obvious hijack angles.
2) Establish some boundaries, or nudge people down (or away from) a particular route. ‘Nudge theory’ relates to influencing decision making through positive reinforcement and indirect suggestions as opposed to instruction or enforcement. In a lot of cases that might be too subtle an approach for social media so some defined boundaries, although counter to the spirit of social media, could also help guard against another Durex situation. If they had limited choice to London, Paris, New York or Pyongyang it wouldn’t have been such an anticlimax.
3) Know your audience… and your enemies. The #McDStories debacle might have never been had they been self-aware enough to recognise that antipathy for their brand probably equals the love for it. Brands, like people, are prone to believing they’re more popular than they actually are so when planning a social media campaign remember that you’re not just getting in front of your loyal fans but potential brand haters as well.
4) Have a clear response policy – 90 per cent of the time it’s best not to respond to trolls at all. But you might have anticipated some scenarios that can or should be dealt with. In these cases, flow diagrams illustrating the “ifs” or “ands” of any response can help you keep control of the situation. But be pragmatic in actual delivery – trotting out stock responses that vaguely relate to the original prompt do more harm than good. Still, if you suspect you have a real live troll on your hands, then don’t give them the satisfaction.
5) Not all annoying or angry people are trolls. Don’t let a siege mentality develop. Some people may have a real issue that needs addressing, and spotting this means that an angry tweet could actually be a problem that you can publicly solve.
David Jamieson (@JamiesonDavid) is an Account Manager at TopLine Communications.