In participating to social media, it is to be expected that not all people would be pleased with your existence. As stated on a previous post, it is only normal because you are exposing yourself, your contents or your brand to people — all kinds of people. The larger the audience is, the higher the probability that you’ll start attracting ‘Haters’.

These are the folks who would take time to talk about you behind your back, slander you online, and not give you any credit or the benefit of te doubt.  They aspire to bring dirt to your name. They lurk around your comment boxes or wherever they can put their negative two-cents in.

Truth is, we can always turn the bad into good good, but how?  Here are some ideas to try to reverse the intended effect of these negative comments or words :

• Don’t look for the negative. We have the tendency to be sensitive in various things, we don’t want anybody throwing dirt to our face, we are becoming too conscious about matters like that which leads us to really looking for negativity in every situation. Try to understand what the words are telling you first before concluding that it really is a negative input — as Howard Rheingold recommends: “assume good intent.”  We tend to go negative when the problem is more probably a mis-communication
• Do not take it personally. If you looked at the comment, for instance, with very objective sight and still you categorized it as a negative one, do not take it personally, it might be directed to what you posted, what you wrote, what you said, what you did, but not you, yourself. It will really mean so much more if you take it as a personal jab at you. Be professional as much as possible.  As we say at Abraham Harrison: always give them hugs and not the horns.  Or, to quote Philo of Alexandria, “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle” — we live by these words.
• Understand the inner sentiment. Be a psychologist for a moment, and try to feel what the commenter is feeling when he said what he said to you. Try to answer the question “why,” why did he say that? For example, someone will say “You already posted this elsewhere, this is nothing new — it’s redundant!”, you may think that the inner sentiment of the statement goes like this “I have read your works, I am following your every post because I am expecting something new”. Basically try to be in the person’s shoes and act as you would.
• Disassemble the words and extract the message. After answering the question why, answer the question “what does this person want me to do?” Surely, the person wants something out of you by delivering those words for you. He may say “This post has so many points, it is so vague.” it might not be directly said but he wants you to organize the idea of the post thoroughly. He might wants you to focus on something instead.  You can actually learn from the criticism — turn the hater’s message into constructive criticism.  Also, since there are a thousand lurkers for every hater, his frustration and hating might be representative of a much larger issue.  Try to dig to the meat of the message.
• Have a unique, witty and immediate response. This is one way to prevent people stress out the same points again. You don’t want negative comments to be posted again and again, so stop it with a great counter immediately but make it a positive one.  However, that said, stay a hundred miles way from being snide, ironic, snarky, sarcastic, or dismissive.  Remember, hugs not horns!
• Finally, Learn something. You should learn something from the encounter, a criticism wont appear if there were no mistake, even a single one. The mistake may be yours or the commenter, either way you should learn from that mistake and be smart enough to study how to avoid it next time.  Again, you can actually learn from the criticism — turn the hater’s message into constructive criticism.  Also, since there are a thousand lurkers for every hater, his frustration and hating might be representative of a much larger issue.  Try to dig to the meat of the message.

If done correctly, this list of tips may turn bad comments into a good input for you.