You’ve spent hours putting together you latest blog post or shooting and editing your newest video, and you JUST KNOW that EVERYONE is going to love it, I mean…why wouldn’t they?! If you spend any amount of time online, you’ll quickly find out that regardless of how good your content is, or how well you think your latest release to the world will be received, be prepared for negativity.
What you SHOULD NOT do!
If you’re like me and you pour yourself into your work and you genuinely care about providing useful, honest, helpful information, it can be very frustrating when this happens. First, let’s start with what you SHOULD NOT do…do NOT go off the deep end and get involved in some type of flame war on your page or wherever the negativity is rearing its ugly head. No, that is absolutely the worst thing you can do. Take off the gloves…put them down – there’s got to be a better approach!
So then what should you do?!
So, now that we’ve determined that you should not engage in all out war with someone, what should you do? More than likely, the best thing to do is….you got it – Nothing. The problem is, generally speaking, people that try and engage in fights with you online are likely doing so just to get a rise out of you. Chances are, there’d be no reasoning with these people so your best bet is to let the negativity slide. HOWEVER, if it becomes a platform for this person to continually post negativity, my suggestion would be to just go ahead and block this particular user, whether it be on your site, YouTube or wherever. There’s a difference between someone having their own opinion versus someone trying to detract from YOUR personal message and hard work. I typically warn someone before I’m about to block them just to give them a fair heads up – yeah, you’re probably going to be threatened with “I’m going to expose you on every site on the web” (I’ve heard that once) or anything else they can come up with. Just remember – it’s YOUR hard work they’re interrupting. Also, to be clear – typically these people are spewing nothing more than empty threats and complete nonsense – they’re looking for attention and rather than go slander you and spend all the time and effort to do so, chances are they’re just going to find another blog, channel, or whatever to go hijack elsewhere.
YouTube Thumbs Down
You’ll never make everyone happy
So what about YouTube? What about these annoying thumbs downs?! Well, unfortunately, there’s really nothing you can do about them. If you get one…well, you got it. Nothing you can do about it. You can’t see who left it, you can’t reverse it, nothing. Nada. Let it go. I know…it is INSANELY hard to let those go. I don’t care if you’ve created a video with 2,000 thumbs ups and 2 thumbs downs – those two are going to bother you but there is absolutely NOTHING you can do about it. Just know that YouTube’s law of averages will be working in your favor. Google/YouTube are well aware that there are always going to be people who are liberal with the thumbs downs, but if your video has 90% positive feedback and 10% negative, you’re still very likely to show up near the top of the results. Also know that the more popular you get, the more people will come out to try and disrupt your flow – it’s unfortunate, but it’s life.
Wrapping up
The best thing to take away from this is to focus on the positive. If a vast majority of people are leaving you positive feedback/comments, then focus on those people. Work to make them even greater supporters of your brand. Do your best to ignore those that are just looking for attention. You will NEVER be able to please all of the people all of the time…so just get out there, create the best content you can and let the negativity fade away.