Dealing with difficult “fans”

Trolls, spammers, flamers and just plain old jerks, we’ve all experienced those who can make our online experience less than pleasant, but what happens when these types end up in your online community? Just one out of control member can completely derail your messaging and end up hijacking your online conversations. Here are some tips on how to control these types and take back control.

Prevention

Have a presence on your site, be a part of the conversation. Sometimes it just takes you being a participant in your community to prevent spammers from even attempting to post. They realize if you are there to moderate and steer the conversation they won’t be able to take over the page with their own agenda.

Moderate

This goes along with being a participant in your community. Keep your members on topic, participate in order to steer the conversation, but don’t censor. Allow dissent, as censorship only seems to escalate a negative situation by angering the spammer and causing them to further target your community.

Mobilize

Allow your members to defend the community for you and mobilize them to keep the conversations on topic. When you have brand advocates it is likely that they won’t tolerate spammers in your community and will take care of them without you having to interfere.

Ban

Every once in a while you will run into a relentless or abusive spammer, if that person continues to post messages that are harassing, inappropriate, or threatening its okay to ban the member.