What I Learned About Communities and Social Media by Hanging Out With the Trolls

A couple of weeks ago, there was a blowup on StumbleUpon. Hardcore SU users who had been using the site for years started lashing out at what they considered to be spam and abuse of the system. You and I would likely say, well, of course we don’t want spam and abuse of the system either. But their definition of spam and abuse was more like our definition of supporting each other in the business community

Let’s just say it got ugly. FAST.

It was a classic full-blown flame war. SEOs and marketers were on the defense of our use of StumbleUpon at all, let alone as a promotional tool. The “Trolls” were labeling mass amounts of content as spam, getting SU to recategorize submissions into inappropriate categories (one of my business posts ended up in AIDS), reporting real, legitimate users as spammers, and leaving extremely hateful, scathing reviews of other stumblers and stories.

It all kind of came to a head for me about two weeks ago, when one of the “Trolls” gave me a scathing review on my SU profile, telling me that I abusing the system, spoiling SU for the rest of the community, and alleged some rather inappropriate accusations against me that were simply untrue. I think anyone who has spent any time online can understand how I felt in that moment. I was effing furious, my heart was racing, and my face was red with anger and all I wanted to do was retaliate and call this guy a “@#$” and a “$%&*” and a “@#$%#@” and a “#$%&*(“.

Oh, AND a “*$#%”.

Thankfully, I didn’t do that. I read it again, and again, and again. And I saw that while I thought this guy was completely off his rocker, he didn’t call me any names (in fact, he suggested that I could call him a ‘troll’ and a ‘devil worshiper’!), he didn’t attack me as a person, and he kept his review to attacking concepts and actions. So I decided (after a few hours of calming down) that I would take a risk and Private Message him. I said something to the effect of:

“You are not a Troll. You attacked my ideas and not me personally. I disagree with everything you said, but I’ll leave the review up on my SU profile. Not because I like it, but because even though I believe you are wrong about me, I respect you for not name calling. Let’s just agree to disagree.”

By sending him that message, I earned his respect, and we basically called a truce. But I couldn’t get the conversation out of my head, so I took another risk. I messaged him again a few days later. I basically asked him to please explain why this war has erupted on SU – that I really didn’t understand where he and his friends were coming from, and I wanted to understand it better.

A few messages back and forth later, Mike and I were typing with smileys and I was signing my notes to him as “W”, which I really only do with people I consider friends. Yes, you read that right. Friends. In fact, I started participating in one of his anti-spam discussion forums, and I give them big credit for welcoming me and being willing to have an open, honest discussion about spam, marketing and social media.

What I learned from Mike and his community is that while we both thought that we were worlds apart, we really weren’t. We certainly disagree on some things, but there were surprising similarities in our goals with social media. Here’s what we found as we got to know each other better:

Definitions of words vary drastically – not just across cultures and countries, but even between people who belong to the same community

Don’t assume that your definition of a “troll“, “flaming” “attack” or even “appropriate” is the same as that of someone who disagrees with you. In fact, Mike and I found that his and my definition of a “Troll” was the thing we disagreed on the most. My definition is someone who attacks people , instead of their ideas. Mike defines a troll as someone who stirs up fights for fun, but that legitimately felt anger is appropriate and should be expressed.

But the word with the biggest variance in definitions is “Spam“. To some stumblers spam is “SEO and Marketing crap disguised as a blog (e.g. “How to write a blog about ‘how to write a blog to make more money’ so you can make more money”)“. I, and the readers of this blog, are legitimately interested in the topic, and predictably get a little bent out of shape when our articles are labeled as spam by such users.

Each community has very different written and unwritten rules

For a community as large as StumbleUpon, there are hundreds, if not thousands, of sub-communities. What we find interesting, appropriate and legitimate as marketers is not the same for those solely interested in hobbies. The problems happen on StumbleUpon when different communities clash and content from marketing spills over into other, not so relevant categories.

If you really want to do a little self-promotion in a community, you must take the time to learn what is appropriate for that particular community. Other communities outside of SU are very open to more blatant self-promotion. And even on SU, what is appropriate for marketers isn’t appropriate for hobbyists.

Don’t game the system

From the mouths of the trolls my friends themselves, this is what they consider gaming the system:

1.) Unsolicited Commercial PM’s (Private Messages)/Unsolicited PM’s promoting *any* site [Non-profits & Charity included.]
2.) Forum posts having nothing to do with the group, the topic, or the conversation
a) Advertising something: a website, an affiliate program, traffic etc.
b) Soliciting an action unprovoked: “Read this website! It’s great!”
3.) Multiple SU Alters – meaning one person *pretending* to be more SU users, or bots being controlled by one person – reviewing, thumbing up a particular site is said to *spam the system* by inflating the *real* audience approval for the website.
4.) It is against Stumble Guidelines to ask another Stumbler to give something a thumb up or review so this, too, could be considered spam. Also another form of this could be “Stumble Exchanges.”
a.) This WILL be considered SU abuse if multiple people participate in an offsite forum with the intention to exchange Stumbles. [Why is this “bad?” This is “bad” because whether they’re quality sites or not get left at the door for the sake of promotion.]

An example of what I would consider to be abuse of the system by marketers are threads at DigitalPoint that exist solely to swap Stumble votes. Again, you may disagree with me, but I think its in very poor taste to vote for articles no matter whether you think the content is worth voting for or not.

Don’t attack people – if you MUST attack , do it only to ideas and concepts; don’t make it personal

I have to say I am glad that Mike approached his first scathing review of me the way he did. I don’t believe we would have been able to move from adversaries to friends if he had made his attack personal. My indirect suggestion to him was to follow this rule simple as he continued in his crusade against spam. Today he messaged me and said:

By the way, if you notice, I am trying a new approach in giving negative reviews. I want to use my negative reviews as a way of pointing out what spam is, rather then insulting the spammer. I also am looking into the spammer’s pages a bit more so that I can cover more ground in the review. It’s funny but, knock on wood, neither of these spammers gave me a bad review when I tried this new approach.

For me personally, this was the biggest reward of the conversation we had.

People want and need to be heard and acknowledged

Guess what? Trolls don’t usually consider themselves trolls. A lot of the time are people who are standing up for a cause – and that cause is usually the protection of their community from exploitation. I was very clear with Mike and his friends that I didn’t agree with their approach of attacking marketers and SEOs, and that I felt it worked against their final outcome.

But after stepping into their shoes, I understand their way of thinking more than ever, and I respect them for standing up for what they feel to be a commercial invasion of their neighborhood. A marketer who uses social media indiscriminately is like someone who walks down your street littering it with thousands of flyers for a used car lot.

Unfortunately, “indiscriminately” is one of those words with varying definitions – which is why it is more important than ever to know your community and ‘add value to it’ before you even consider trying to ‘get something out of it’. But even then some people will still think of bloggers who monetize as “blogwhores” – no matter what.

Remember that social media is not the best vehicle for selling products or services in the first place

Nearly every marketing post about using social media as a marketing tool will also tell you the following: social media traffic doesn’t click on ads, they don’t buy things, and they will not promote your pitch page or e-commerce store for you. Some bloggers go so far as to not even charge their advertisers for the traffic that originates from Digg or StumbleUpon, because otherwise the advertisers would likely leave. Of course, there are always exceptions – I’ve seen great things on Etsy featured on SU – but they are the exception, not the rule (and I’d bet $1000 that even Etsy store pages on SU hardly convert into sales, if at all).

I think the only sale that works at all in social media is the soft sell

The simple definition of a soft sell is “A subtly persuasive, low-pressure method of selling or advertising”. Applied to social media, I believe it to mean the following:

Take time to research to ensure the community will be interested in what you are ‘selling’ in the first place

Don’t sell yourself

Add value to the community, be real, be a friend

Wait patiently until people ask you to pitch them – which may be never

Show up as a person, not as a marketer or a representative of your company

When Mike took the time to go through my StumbleUpon history, he realized he had jumped to conclusions about my intentions. He saw that I didn’t just stumble marketing stuff, and that I rarely had submitted my own stuff in the past – and that I frequently thumbed-up crafts, news stories, and other things that really have nothing at all to do with marketing myself or my business.

If you’re planning on tapping social media for your business, start by showing up as the real you first – business can and should come second in communities that are as diverse as a place like StumbleUpon.

Summed up, contribute your time and effort to the community even when it doesn’t benefit you directly. Is it more time consuming this way? Absolutely. But in my own opinion, I believe this to be the golden rule of social media best practices. And yes, you are free to disagree with me on that one.

There will be disagreement

I think that bloggers, marketers, and SEOs (search engine optimizers) are going to have to face the fact that what we say, even if said with the best of intentions, can and will draw a backlash at times. And there will always be a group of people who will not just disagree, but actively hate us for bringing a marketing message into their community, even if it wasn’t your intention to do so.

Reacting to that hate with aggression and anger will do more harm than good. Reacting to it with more marketing will get you slam-dunked into the label of a spammer.

Before I had this conversation with Mike, I have to admit I felt pretty self-righteous in the my belief that it is OK to mix business stuff with personal stuff. I have to say now that it’s OK for me – and that I need to be a little more sensitive to others who disagree with me on that. I might not be able to engage every single critic in a conversation the way I did with Mike, but hopefully I’ll have a few less critics because Mike was willing to let me walk in his shoes for a while.

What do you think?

This post turned out much longer than I thought it would, and I’m leaving it a little open-ended on purpose. Whether you are a marketer, SEO, or even a ‘troll’, I think we have a lot to gain by talking to each other.

So what do you think about mixing marketing with social media?