Have you noticed? There’s some campaigns that lights the blue touch paper with some people.
During Pride events supported by fire, NHS, council or any organisation there’s often a minority of trolls.
‘Why are you doing X’, they’ll ask. ‘It’s a waste of money, it’s the Metropolitan elite, it’s the wokerati and you can’t say anything nowadays.’
But, let’s be honest, its not just the rainbow event is it? There’s a shortlist that triggers the easily triggered events that can include Christmas, International Women’s Day, Eid, Ramadan, Easter and any religious holiday.
If anything doesn’t look exactly how they look then it’s a problem.
The decision for a public sector comms person is quite tricky. Do you post about it or don’t you? I’ve heard of people actively not posting because they’re so worried at the response.
I understand that but I don’t agree with it.
So, what do you do?
Well, the first thing is to get a set of social media house rules. I’ve blogged about this before and it’s good to see these becoming more mainstream.
However, there is something else you can do. Think of it as a planned response list.
Basically, this list brings together all the things you can say in response to explain what you are doing. But the important thing is to get your broad response signed off so you know where you stand and you’re not
Forward planning for the win
West Midlands Police plan ahead on their socials. They’ve been doing this this since the English Defence League’s first trip to Birmingham. Then the extremist group sewed misinformation about a knife attack by a gang of Muslims on a white teenager. It never happened but the fall out raised tension.
So, next time the far right protestors came there was an officer armed with Twitter in Gold Control seeking and destroying the information. It worked effectively and became part of their regular response.
The result was, a duty press officer could shoot down rumours in real time without having to go through the lengthy process of getting each tweet signed off.
On International Women’s Day for many years, comedian Richard Herring would actively seek out those men – and they generally were men – who asked sarcastically when International Men’s Day was.
November 19, he’d answer and sometimes be wittily robust while doing it.
Edinburgh Zoo won praise for politely challenging homophobic responses on their Facebook page when they posted about Pride. The response attracted a lot of support in the community and also led to a surge in on-the-spot contributions.
Royal British Legion have been excellent about this in the past. Poppy Day can bring out the bigots with evergreen disinformation around poppies being banned. They plan ahead and take a careful look at the comments on their channels.
Often, I find that the Police are the most on the front foot of all against trolls. NHS people are the most reticent.
Timing when you make the post
Help is at hand. The answer is to plan ahead.
When the Pope came to Coventry about a decade ago the council posted the news late on Friday. When they returned on Monday morning war had broken out over the weekend between the factions of people.
Nick from Leeds City Council has spoken about posting at 7am. Thinking about it, there’ll be a moderator around for the first few hours. People will be sober, too.
Leaving it to a passer–by
Leaving it for a member of the public to step into has worked in the past.
However, sometimes there just isn’t a member of the public around who can be like the Green Cross Code Man and save the day.
This should be a bonus rather than your whole strategy.
Draw up your own list of lines to take
If you are looking to post a campaign on a topic that may spark a needlessly unpleasant reaction here’s an approach to take.
Ask yourself these questions ahead of time:
- Have you done this in the past?
- If you have, what comments have been said about this in the past and what did you learn?
- Has an event like this been done by others and what did they say in response?
- If you haven’t, what’s the worst level that people can potentially stoop to and what would we say and do?
- What tone do you want to set?
- What key points do you want to make?
- Do you need to make some assets in advance?
- If you have a set of social media house rules, under that, what comments do you allow and what don’t you allow? And where’s the line that if crossed you can start blocking people?
Once you ask yourself these questions you can start to build a list of responses that acts as your armoury ahead of the event.
In particular, deciding the tone in advance is useful. It gives you the confidence to operate on the day. Inevitably, comments like these can land outside office hours or when senior people aren’t around.
Do all this and you can better navigate choppy waters.