Effective commenting as a way of building reputation in professional communities

In the era of socialization, it is difficult to imagine a person ignoring all kinds of communities and social networks. If we do not vote for photos of friends on Odnoklassniki, then, for sure, we exchange messages on Vkontakte. If not Vkontakte, then on Facebook. And, more often, both there and there. However, these social networks have an entertaining character and to promote themselves as a professional, if they are not completely unsuitable, they are poorly adapted. Another thing is professional communities. We’ll talk about participation in them.


I often watch how seemingly successful, successful specialists in response to criticism allow themselves to leave cues, the impression of which remains, to put it mildly, ambiguous. I’m willing to argue that if they were with their opponent at a round table in the presence of other observers, they would probably choose expressions that were much more neutral and would not give the impression of squabbled and unbalanced guys. But negative comments are as natural as minus temperatures outside the window.


Was Ivan Goldberg talking about the very reduced level of self-control, defining Internet addiction? I do not presume to judge and instead I will formulate several recommendations that I have tested on my own experience.

Do not comment

It looks, at first glance, utter nonsense. If you still decide to respond to a negative remark in your address, I ask you to think again. Allow one unpleasant comment to get lost among a dozen neutral ones and do not focus on it. Please note that Internet users tend to provoke each other into long, meaningless discussions. I cannot explain why this happens, but I can use this knowledge for my own purposes. Remember: your aggressive reaction to a negative comment in response will generate another negative comment. And so on ad infinitum, until one of the opponents runs out of funds on the subscriber’s account of the provider or, less likely, is smart enough to stop. In addition, voluntarily getting involved in a verbal skirmish, you take a defensive position. And the best defense, as you know,


What to do when a statement directed against you is untrue, slanderous, and directly or indirectly damages your honor or the honor of your company? In the case when it is impossible not to answer ...

Pause

Do not write in response the first thing that came to mind. Firstly, because you risk rudely saying a lot of things that should be silent. Secondly, in a fit of anger, you are likely to start knocking on the keys faster than usual and make some annoying grammatical, logical, punctuation or other mistakes. Remember - this can be read by your potential customers. Among their business partners, they want to see self-confident professionals, not illiterate sociopaths.


Each of us at least once found himself drawn into such battles and in a fit of indignation immediately uttered many incoherent and probably insulting words, and after a few minutes it lit up with a truly worthy and convincing answer that came to mind - “That's how it was fend off! ” In order not to repeat mistakes, let off steam and calmly select an acceptable wording of the answer. Avoid profanity, do not go on to discuss the personality of the opponent. State the facts, stick to the main topic of discussion and beware of bringing rumors as arguments.


And finally ...

Do not support the discussion

Honor your opponent with one but convincing answer. However, be prepared that they will answer you, but this is likely to end it. Once you enter into discussion again, the discussion branch will continue to grow, leaps and bounds. It often happens that such wars of eloquence go in their madness far from the topic under discussion and expose their participants not in the best light.


Finally, another tip. If you nevertheless set off in all serious ways and fight to the last - do not delete your comments the next morning. Remember the Streisand effect - deleting some information only leads to its wider dissemination.


Have a nice chat!