Pick Your Battles

Everyone has come across a point in their lifetime where they were on some kind of social media and they see an image or a post that they dislike and feel the need to comment on. it could even be just another person’s comment that they dislike and feel the need to share their input. It all comes down to picking and choosing your battles. What about receiving a comment that you did not like or went against what you believed in? To quote a line from Thumper from the movie Bambi (if you have never seen it, you are missing out let me tell you), “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say it at all”. I have always tried to follow this in real life and in the social media realm, but let’s face it, it is sooo much easier to say something nasty to someone or try to put someone in their place if you are doing so from behind a screen. You have the time to think of what you want to say and how you want to say it. If you are on the reciprocating end of a rude or negative comment, you probably feel like you have to defend yourself. And there are ways to doing this without sounding illiterate and vulgar. In this past week from reading The Art of Social Media, I have personally learned some new and interesting ways on how to accomplish this.

These two certain tips seem pretty simple and are just basic common sense, but it’s easier to say that than to actually follow it. The author states how you should be positive when responding, but if you can’t, then agree to disagree. This is what Thumper said in a nutshell, but I don’t think this author was talking about friendly woodland creatures. I thought these two points were interesting, especially this day in age. Everyone is more entitled to believing that it’s their way or the highway. I think this is super important for everyone to remember, especially influential pages like businesses and organizations. If someone comments about receiving a bad product from a company on their Facebook page, the company being ridiculed should not jump out and blame the consumer. That will give your company or organization a bad reputation.

The next tip that I found was very interesting and worth remembering is the three round rule. If a person leaves a comment then that is round one. Round to is you responding. If they respond again, that is round three. Do not comment again. This only creates a unnecessary war that will end up making you and the company or organization look foolish for going back and forth with a random unhappy person on the internet. I have definitely marked this down as something to never forget.

One thing that seemed a little confusing to me was the “Peg” Your Post section. There was ten steps, but it felt like fifty. It just seemed to be a lot of work to be doing to get your stuff out there to the people. I suppose that when you are trying to reach as many people as possible, you will do whatever it takes to get the results you want.