I have a reality check for freelance writers and bloggers who wish to have a web presence: eventually there will come a time when you’ll be on the receiving end of a steaming pile of negativity.
The negativity may be a result of something true that you wanted to keep locked away in a closet forever, or it might be something not so true. It might even be something you brought on yourself and deserve. How you react to the negativity can be the difference between the scandal blowing over quickly or lingering for a long time.
The hit
There’s nothing like waking up one morning and reading something about you that either isn’t true or isn’t nice. Bad news doesn’t ever come at a good time. Half the time you’re hit by someone you liked or trusted, and that makes it even worse. It’ll hurt and it’ll sting. You’re going to worry who else is reading it and what they’re thinking. You’re going to want to immediately spring into action and do damage control. You want everyone to know your side of the story.
Don’t react…yet
Learn from my mistakes.
Wait before reacting. You’re going to want to do a bunch of different things, none of them will be right. Everyone loves a good scandal. They’re going to look for everything they can on this and if you react passionately or suddenly it will only result in more negativity. Take a day or a few days to let it sink in. Let the publicity and bad vibes die down. If you still feel you need to address it, do so after a day or two of reflection. It may not even be necessary to react at all. Don’t run off on the defensive, it only makes the scandal worse.
Consider the source
A few months ago a member of the FWJ community wrote a negative and false post about me on his blog. I made the mistake of reacting. I immediately wrote a retaliation post here. A couple of hours later I read what I wrote and thought it sounded silly and defensive. I removed it, but the damage was done. In fact, I received some not so favorable emails from members of this community. They agreed the other person’s attack on me wasn’t true and wasn’t necessary, but they were turned off by my going tit for tat.
Here’s the thing…I should have considered the source. His post? It sent a total of two people to my blog during the week following the scandal. Probably if I hadn’t called attention to it, no one would have known about it. Once I retaliated I sent the other person a whole bunch of traffic PLUS the same old anonymous trolls came out of the woodwork to say even more negative (and untrue) things. Ignoring it would have allowed the FWJ community to draw their own conclusions, if they even came across the post at all. It would have allowed them to privately ask questions if they were so inclined.
What not to do
Don’t react. Don’t go from blog to blog defending yourself, don’t fire off an angry blog post and don’t feel you have to discuss it with everyone who comes along. The people who don’t like you or don’t want you to succeed will enjoy seeing you on the defensive and will have fun with all your words. Nothing you can say or do will change their minds.
A couple of months ago, a very well known and well respected freelance writing “expert” included an attack on me in her attack on a content mill. This attack hurt the most for a couple of reasons. The first was that this expert is someone who I trusted to look out for writers and tell the truth. Her investigation and subsequent attack on me twisted some words around for her benefit and left out a few very key details. It made me feel betrayed because I now wondered if all of her investigations were skewed and biased.
Another reason this attack stung is because of all the people who publicly reacted. Members of my community who now didn’t trust me because of this expert who they believed always spoke the Gospel. That probably hurt the most.
I took a different approach with this unwarranted attack. I didn’t react. I didn’t go from blog post to blog post. I read all the blog posts and comments and let it sink in. When I finally did react by commenting on one blog post, I was invited to tell my story and I did…another mistake. Not that it resulted in more negativity but because at that time it was a week later and the scandal had died down. I fanned the flames and started it all back up again.
It will always come back to haunt you
If you react by reacting, it will always come back to haunt you. Folks will call you immature or retaliatory because you fired off in anger. They’ll call you unprofessional because you went tit for tat. They’ll say they hoped you weren’t so petty. Reacting almost always never leads to good things.
Your options are to take it and not react, and let folks wonder why you’re so quiet about it all, or react and let everyone question your credibility and professionalism. You’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t. Take the high road. It’ll die down quicker if you just let it go. You may take a big hit as a result but the people who appreciate you and what you do will still stick around in the end.
How hard the train crashes is up to you
If you put yourself in the public eye it’s important to note there are always going to be people who won’t like you. There are plenty of people who might even want you to fail. Other writers, other bloggers, and other people in the social media space will act friendly and most are. Like in the real world though, knowing who to trust is a crapshoot. If you find yourself on the receiving end of some negativity, tell yourself everyone likes a train wreck especially if there’s a pile up and lots of bodies left in its wake. You’ll be surprised at the people who smell blood in the water and circile around.
Without sounding too lame, you man the controls to your own train. How you respond to negativity is the difference between a simple derailment and a full on rubber necking situation.
How do you respond to negativity? When you see something written about another writer or blogger, do you give that person the benefit of the doubt – or do you believe what you read?
Negativity..discuss…
I don’t expect everyone to like everything that I put out there. When someone does disagree, I do stop to consider whether they have a point. Maybe I need to make some changes, and that can be a good thing.
If someone is just going on the attack with comments like I’m an idiot or whatever, I put them on Ignore. They are going to think whatever they want anyway.
That doesn’t mean that hurtful comments don’t sting, but it doesn’t mean that I have to let someone else’s actions ruin my day or affect how I think about myself. The thing is – they drop that written bomb and they move on. The best choice is for me to do the same.
Unfortunately, the advice you’re giving is the exact opposite of what most crisis pr specialists will tell you. If you don’t take control of the flow of information, and quickly, then you’re letting someone else set the agenda. A “no comment” strategy just means people will go somewhere else. I’m not saying you did things right, but I’m also saying that ignoring a public crisis is dead, dead wrong.
You don’t see massive traffic boosts from these kinds of things Deb?
From negativity on someone else’s blog? No, not usually. Mostly I lose subscribers and get hate mail. Same with negativity on this blog, I get some train wreck traffic but not a huge spike. If I post something negative here it mostly serves to drive traffic to the other person’s blog and not vice versa. Mostly I hear from the FWJ community and they tell me how much I let them down.
Huh. I’m surprised by the comments here. I’ll add my own, because they differ.
The worst thing you can do in any situation is react quickly without thinking. Don’t fire off a reply. Don’t react defensively. Don’t justify yourself, and don’t explain.
Step away. Take a few hours off – a day or two, even. Think. Calm down and assess your feelings, know what you’re feeling, and why. Prepare calm responses to what you *need* to deal with, first. Prepare secondary responses to what you *want* to deal with.
And above all, reply concisely, without launching into a longwinded explanation. As they say, “Methinks he doth protest too much.” State your stance and leave it at that. Otherwise as Deb says, you just give other people fuel and fan the flames.
@ Justin – Most people who deal in crisis control don’t advocate rushing like a mad fool to post up your reply. They advocate taking control, yes, and guiding people appropriately – but they never advocate emotional, knee-jerk replies. To achieve a calm reply, you do need time to think and find the facts to address them appropriately.
@ Allena – Personally, traffic boosts from negative PR aren’t the kind of thing I’d want, and I don’t think Deb wants that sort of traffic either. Traffic because people respect the views put forth are the best kind to have.
Though they do say there’s no such thing as bad PR, eh?
Mixed feelings.
Often, people that do this have a fairly high “social quotient” so they know what they can get away with. That is, they know how to set up a situation to put you in a double bind, where no matter what you do or say, it will be used against. Even if you do nothing, that will be taken as “proof.”
I don’t have any advice for dealing with viciousness, because I’m not vicious. So I don’t get it. I do the same thing as you Deb. I would prefer to not ever be in these situations. But I think it’s a consequence of success.
You forgot to add: ‘Remember those who have your back’.
A huge mistake that someone in this type of situation can make is to forget who had their back during the drama and put their own reputations on the line. Those people might end up feeling unappreciated if the only time they’re turned to is during a dramafest and then forgotten until the next one. It isn’t only the reputation of the person being slammed that can get ruined. That gets forgotten – these stupid blog/website fights have far reaching effects.
Hmmm, this is a very different yet familiar dilemma from my experience. Having worked in PR and crisis communication I agree with Justin and don’t think he’s advocating quickfire emotional response – that’s not what professionally “controlling flow” means. If negative publicity involves clarifying misinformation that impacts a group of people then yes you “proactively react” by getting the correct info out there ASAP. If the negative PR is reaction to an opinion or a post (a la I know better than you) then it becomes an unprofessional tit for tat and not worth it. If you have real heartburn over one person’s PR crusade to get attention, take a cue from elected officials I worked for and address that person PERSONALLY ONE TO ONE. Thus you give them the attention they desire and save face professionally – win/win situation. Karla
I think that this falls under reputation management, and one of the best things you can do is counter negative information with positive information. Instead of sinking to the depths of your attackers, you have to react with only the best aspects of whatever they are attacking. Like if they are saying you wrote a bad article on a specific topic, you should counter with testimonials from people who have found your articles very useful and inspiring.