You’re in marketing for one reason: Grow. Grow your company, reputation, customers, impact, profits. Grow yourself. This is a community that will help. It will stretch your mind, connect you to fascinating people, and provide some fun along the way. I am so glad you’re here. -Mark Schaefer
This week we scrapped plans for the podcast we had planned to address a controversy that emerged at Edison Research, Tom Webster’s company.
It was time for us to reflect on the great two-edged sword we all face on the Internet: the historically important opportunity to publish and be heard, and the vulnerability we face to be skewered without compassion … or facts.
Overall, the Internet is a good place. A VERY good place, in fact. But it is also a reflection of the human race and about 2 percent of the population discovers some psychological reward in being angry. Twenty years ago, a business could probably ignore those people without much damage but today there is a very real chance that strategy will make the problem worse. Big business or small, we must be aware of these risks and the appropriate responses.
In this discussion, we cover …
- Guidelines for responding or not responding to Internet haters
- The fear of toxicity … real and imagined
- Learning to handle trolls
- When to go to the mat and when to walk away
- Showing your true colors in the face of hate
- Is 100 percent customer satisfaction possible?
Ready to do this thing? Here we go:
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Click on this link to listen to Episode 40
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Resources mentions in this episode
The Infinite Dial blog post by Larry Rosin
A six-step plan to respond to negative comments on the web
Research on 98 percent customer satisfaction survey
Illustration: Check out the beautiful peace sign art by Laura Barbosa
