Social media trolls are a pain, especially when they start targeting you. They are in your direct messages (DMs) and posts’ comment sections. The constant bombardment from these users can make it feel like this will never come to an end. How to deal with social media trolls without affecting your credibility and reputation?
Keep scrolling to the next section because this guide shows how to deal with trolls on social media.
What Are Trolls in Social Media?
Trolls on social media are users who harass you in digital spaces with offensive, inflammatory, hateful, and irrelevant content. They love creating chaos and do everything in their power to negatively affect your online presence. They want to create unnecessary drama so that you argue with them.
Here are some strategies they use on their victims:
- They resort to name-calling and use derogatory terms and phrases.
- They will flood you with comments and DMs with hate speech or irrelevant images and content.
- They will be dismissive when you confront them.
- They try to redirect the conversation.
- They create multiple fake accounts and use bots to attack you personally and professionally.
- They will escalate the situation the moment you respond to their replies or DMs.
Smart Strategies To Handle Trolls on Social Media
Trolls have several weaknesses you can use to your advantage and come out unscathed. Here’s how to handle trolls on social media.
Avoid Engaging With Trolls
Trolls love to get a reaction from you. This is why they do everything they possibly can to attack you. They’ll throw personal insults and become verbally aggressive. The best way to deal with trolls is to ignore them altogether. You know — act like they don’t exist. Don’t acknowledge them.
When they see that what they’re saying or doing doesn’t affect you, they won’t feel motivated to continue trolling you. Remember, you cannot fight fire with fire, especially with internet trolls.
Create a Clear Response Strategy
Sometimes, you’ll have no option but to respond to these social media trolls. What should you do in these situations? The best way is to have a response strategy. Create guidelines for responding to these users and share them with your team.
For example, avoid using aggressive language because you don’t want to bring yourself down to their level. Another policy is to be kind and use positive and friendly language.
Use Filters and Block Features Effectively
To avoid engaging with trolls, you can use filters to ensure you don’t see their comments or DMs. For example, Twitter, aka X, can filter low-quality or spam messages. You can even control who can send message requests to you.
Another option to deal with political trolls in social media is to block these accounts. Once you block them, they won’t be able to find your profile or engage with you.
Stay Calm and Professional
Trolls want you to lose your calm and attack them. They want you to hurl expletives because this lets them know they’re living inside your head, rent-free. It gives them joy when they see you’re losing control of the situation.
Instead, try to stay calm and professional. This can be hard, especially when the attacks are personal. But if you respond professionally, it can take the fun away from trolling. It may make the whole process boring, and they’ll move on.
If it’s still not working, just acknowledge that you did your best and continue your day.
Report and Keep Records of Abusive Behavior
Sometimes, it’s better to let the social media platform handle online trolls. When you come across these users, make it a point to document their behavior. Take screenshots with timestamps because they are helpful when you report these users.
Educate Your Followers on Dealing With Trolls
Another option is to teach your followers about trolls and how to deal with them. If you have a game plan, share it with your audience.
Ask them to report these accounts when they come across such users in your posts. The more people report trolls, the more likely social media platforms will take action against these accounts.
Set the Rules: No Trolls Allowed
Prevention is better than cure — this is 100% the case when it comes to trolls. Why allow these users to engage with your content in the first place? Make it clear that you will remove comments from trolls without a second thought.
They may try to act like a victim and claim you’re deleting their comments. You can show them your rules and continue ignoring them in this situation.
Assign Moderators To Manage Your Community
If you have a large community, monitoring conversations yourself is almost impossible. A better way is to assign moderators to do what’s best for your community. Give them the freedom to remove unwanted comments and report such users.
On Twitter, now X, you can assign moderators to take care of your Twitter Communities.
Take a Moment To Cool Off Before Replying
Some comments and DMs can feel infuriating, and you no longer want to hold back. But this can backfire, especially if you’re a brand or a popular figure in your community.
How to respond to trolls on social media in situations where you’re finding it hard to contain your anger? You need to take some time off to cool off. But this is easier said than done.
One way is to count to 100 slowly. Or, just put your device away and try to do something you enjoy. Do anything that will take your mind away from the situation.
Once you’re in control, you can reply to the troll. Or, you know, just don’t because it’s better if the trolls have no idea if they’re getting to you.
Turn Trolls Into a Branding Opportunity
You can make trolls part of your branding strategy. For example, they raised legitimate concerns about your brand, but in a rather unsavory manner. You might as well acknowledge their problems and offer a resolution.
Use Humor To Defuse Negativity
There’s nothing like some good old humor to defuse the negativity that comes with trolls. Getting people to laugh can put your brand in a positive light. After all, they’re trying to get you to react with their unhinged comments.
In most situations, they may not know how to respond. But using humor to deal with trolls is walking a fine line. It’s easy to come across as offensive, even if this wasn’t your intention.
Engage Thoughtfully and Respectfully
Remember, everything you say is visible to everyone, i.e., your friends, family, and customers. It’s better to be respectful with your responses. Even unhappy customers may seem like trolls.
As highlighted earlier, take your time to respond. Be thoughtful with your reply, and you’ll always be a winner.
At some point, trolls will get to us, no matter how hard we try to keep our composure. You let your emotions get the better of you and went all-out with your response. After the dust settled, it became clear that what you said made you look unprofessional.
If people read these types of responses, their perception of you will change for the worse. It will affect your reputation. Thankfully, if you use tools like TweetEraser, you won’t have to worry about unprofessional comments.
We make it simple to erase your Twitter posts, replies, likes, and reposts. With a few words, date ranges, hashtags, or phrases, we will find what you want to delete. You can easily remove thousands of tweets and comments with a few clicks.
Did we also mention that you can automate the deletion of unwanted content? Set it up, and our tool will do the rest. It will periodically scan your profile and remove anything that matches your preferences.
FAQ
Social media trolls are users who send messages or post comments in order to get you to argue with them. These users will make unbelievable statements, make personal attacks, use irrational logic, and use other techniques to frustrate you.
You can identify trolls on Twitter by looking for the following signs:
– They have anonymous accounts, i.e., the username looks random or uses other people’s images as their profile pictures. Some accounts may not have any profile picture.
– They spam your DM and comment section with irrelevant content.
– They become aggressive when you confront them.
– They ignore facts and logical arguments.
Comments from Twitter trolls will have one of the following characteristics:
– They will name-call you with trending derogatory insults like Karen, Chad, or Becky.
– They take a dig at you out of the blue.
– They are quick to point out any mistakes you make.
– They dismiss everything you say.
