How to deal with trolls on social media?

Trolling masters settled online space a long time ago. Their favorite habitats are social media discussions and online comments. If you had to face this phenomenon on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or other social networks and did not know how to protect your reputation or company’s image, then this article is right for you.

Trolls periodically monitor social media profiles, blogs, websites and forums to attract attention. They come to the social world to write provocative statements, controversial arguments, boorish messages or just smth stupid. Their main goal is to create a scandal or disrupt harmony in brands promotion through customer reviews.

It’s rather curiously but sometimes trolls can involuntarily turn your ordinary post into a viral content online.

Often, it does not even matter what is being discussed. The main thing for them is to attract attention. Many forum visitors define the most appropriate solution – to ignore trolls. But does it work? Let’s try to consider.

Why trolls troll

Psychologists associate trolls behavior with an extremely low self-esteem and personal problems associated with lack of attention, sociopathy, and so on.

They need to manipulate others and initiate conflicts. If you try to get to know them better, you’ll find probably that they are not highly smart people. A small victory for a troll is to involve followers, to humiliate or slander them.

Here you can find some insights about why trolls troll and what the psychology of trolling is.

Typical trolling methods on social media

Trolls set themselves different tasks, but their methods are quite the same:

• To introduce themselves as opinion leaders and after several messages continue with senseless or negative posts.
• To act like idiots and with their presence affect the company’s reputation on social media.
• To try shifting attention, withdraw from the topic of discussion to their personal problems.
• To provoke the participants to discuss “eternal” or awkward issues. Windows or Linux, Paris or London, the eastern model or “American dream”, etc.

Effective power against trolling

The best protection is the attack, isn’t it? Sounds good but this rule does not always work.

Yes, as practice shows, the best fight with trolls is ignoring their activity. Trying to be friendly and politely explaining something to him or her is to make them rejoice.

After all, you will spend your time and energy on what they do not need at all. It is better to defiantly urge other participants of the discussion not to react to such trolling and not to give the trolls reasons to progress. The aim of administrators is to ban them but sometimes it’s not the best option. Believe, they will find a dozen ways to get revenge.

You ban means you’re scared

If you decide to block a troll, then it is better to do this quietly.

The troll, of course, will openly declare on other sites that you are frightened and take the most drastic measures. But over time, if you systematically ignore such attacks, his/her grip will be lost.

Unfortunately, the damage of trolling can be serious. Even if such a discussion leads to new participants, your competitors will quickly take advantage of mistakes or negative information. Perhaps the successful trolls can even be hired to destroy your reputation.

8 ways to attack trolling

• Constantly review the comments to your posts. Sometimes trolls can “occupy” the most commented and popular posts. Use analytical tools to find and filter such posts. It’s easy to do this with KUKU.io by filtering your posts according to appropriate metrics.

• Do not provoke and cherish enemies on your social networks. Neutrality is a good choice, it will protect the online reputation on social media.
• Make them bored. The more you ignore them, the sooner they’ll lose the interest.
• Inform followers and partners about the fact of trolling.
• Try to learn more about the trolls. Perhaps the information about them “lies on the surface.”
• Watch your reputation. Do not give them chances to hook for negative issues.
• Note that a troll can use private messages. So if you have the opportunity to catch evil in time – take this chance.
• Do not panic without reasons. In the end, the majority of participants of social discussions nowadays know about existence of trolls and they understand the situation.

Some trolls are real skilled provocateurs. But you know what? They upgrade their “qualification” with our help.

We hope, this article will assist you in protecting your social media from trolling and ensure safety of your online reputation.

Read more: Content Strategy / Reputation management / Tips