The truth of working in Social Media
You’ve got a problem… this amazing thing you’ve bought is broken. Your world is crushed, you are lost without this thing in your life and livid at the fact that this brand new shiny thing you’ve bought with your hard-earned money isn’t working. What do you do? How do you cope? Will you survive this?
The answer is YES! There is a solution! You can take your anger to the internet!
You hop online and, oh happy days, the offending company has a social media presence, and you will exact your fury upon them! You unleash a flurry of adjectives that cannot be misunderstood (after all they need to know how unhappy you are), and that you are a person who deserves the best and nothing less will do! You’ve given them your money and they should know better, because things in your life MUST BE PERFECT! Plus, it’s just going to be some poor loser whose job it is to deal with your anger and fix your problem and restore the balance in your universe.
Well that poor loser is me…
90% of my personality only exists on the internet
I love my job (Honestly, I really REALLY do!), but one of the more challenging aspects I have to deal with is the fact that I work on the front lines of corporate social media. Most of the time I get to interact with some of the coolest people, create interesting conversation, and help to build fun communities on the internet, but it’s not always sunshine, hashtags and rainbow emojis. I am also the person who gets all the anger that people can’t hold in any longer. I’m the first person who gets attacked the moment goes wrong and because some days (when I’m extra lucky) I get someone who is so upset that the only way they can express themselves is to lash out against the first person they can get into contact with (enter Amanda).
Nothing gets past the internet. One small typo leads to comments insulting my intelligence, a repeated word? Oh HELL NO! That behaviour won’t be tolerated, and some one out there behind a keyboard gets to be the one who is going to point that out.
I understand that it’s frustrating when you’ve paid for something that isn’t working, and yes, it is my job to help you in any way I can or connect with someone to help, but when you come from a place of aggression or anger I’m much less inclined to want to go the extra thousand miles I can to help you. Let’s be clear, I will never shy away from doing my job, I love it and I plan on continue loving it for a long time. But if you make people like me aware of your issue and give us a chance to do our jobs and try to help, it’s a much smoother process for everyone (and if they are anything like me they will do anything and everything to try and make the bad things better, it’s what we do!).
But if I can ask anything of you lovely people out there, pleeeeeeeeeeeease think twice before using these methods to displaying your obvious displeasure (I mean we get it, but is any of the following really necessary?):
Threatening to “expose us to the internet” over your issue. Social media can be powerful, but threatening anyone isn’t going to make it any better. No one likes rewarding bad behavior.
Insulting the person who is on the receiving end of your tirade. We will do what we can to help you, but in all likelihood, we have next to nothing to do with your problem and are just a liaison. Please don’t shoot the messenger; we are just here to get your message to the right people. The easier you make that for us, the more likely we are to relay that message and make sure you get heard as soon as humanly possible.
Sending the same message on every platform that you can get your hands on. Think quality over quantity, your messages probably all go to the same place and to one person and they now get the fun job of crafting replies for each of your channels so that they are not accused of copying and pasting and not giving enough craps.
Sending your “followers” after us. This is a BIG thing with social media influencers. These people have worked hard to get people to follow them, but sending your loyal viewers after us like an angry mob really doesn’t leave a great taste in anyone’s mouth, and like elephants, people in marketing rarely forget when someone has gone out of their way to make your life difficult. If a company has a relationship with you and you crap all over them, they are likely not going to continue that relationship. Secondly, you would be surprised at how many times I’ve had an influencer reach out after publicly bad mouthing the page I’m working, saying that they would loooooooove the chance to work with us.
Excuse me???? Do you think I have the memory of a goldfish? I think we are going to pass…. A social media following does not make you above the common courtesy of being a decent person.
For the sake of the length of this post (and my personal sanity), I’m also just going to completely ignore the existence of the internet troll. The subject gets me all fired up, and I know that’s what they want…so here I am, blissfully ignoring them.
NO ONE LIKES YOU TROLLS!
In the grand scheme of things bringing issues to our attention is totally fine, in fact it’s ENCOURAGED! Sometimes, this go wrong, something breaks, or can’t be figured out, and if there is a way I can help you with that I would love nothing more than making your life easier. But please try to keep in mind that we are just people, imperfect like you and we have good days and bad days too. We are just trying our best to make a small difference, and if you speak to us like you would want someone to talk to you, things will go so much more smoothly.
The saying goes “you catch more flies with honey than vinegar”, but there are those that follow with "you catch even more with poop"
…please don’t hurl poop at us.
**In the interest of full disclosure, I have to say that this is a post I had written in February, but I’ve made some changes (checked my spelling and grammar) and frankly, I believe it’s just as true now as it was then.**