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Social media representation seems to be an increasingly popular business these days. For those of you who are unfamiliar with what that basically entails, usually it’s when a third-party (an agency) takes on a company’s social media channels and manages, customizes or grows interest around them. It’s a powerful form of PR and can be used as a customer support/satisfaction tool. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it doesn’t matter if you’re an individual, a group or corporation, if you’re issuing content on the Web, at some point you are going to be attacked. Your words will be warped, your integrity will be put into question, and someone will be waiting in the mist just to tell you that not only are you WRONG, but you’re also ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS.

It’s a jungle out there, but when things take a wrong turn, you come down to a cross-road and can either ball your eyes out or make it work to your advantage. Bad news can really be made into good news in the end.

Let’s be practical, none of us want to create a fire on the web. Enemies aren’t cool. The web-etiquette tips are all over the web, search for them if you please, but they’re just nice and dandy but they almost exclusively miss out on the web’s core fundamentals: 1) Conflict cannot always be avoided. 2) Conflict shouldn’t always be avoided.

Before you discount this argument as idiotic, yes, it’s actually healthy to have people throw flames at you. There’s actually an old saying in the media industry that “you’re nobody until somebody flames you. “As sad as it may sound, it’s a little bit true. When you get your first hit by an active tweep or facebooker with some influence, welcome it. In fact, you should celebrate it because it probably means that you’ve doing something right – but don’t forget that the real work follows thereafter.

How do you do it you ask?

Observe Activity – Like a HAWK!

Typically, in the early moments after the attacker’s initial blog outburst, you’re going to see a wave of activity. You’re going to be called an idiot. Your company will be mocked. Everyone will be so morally outraged that it will be as if you had killed mother-Teresa. Let the masses work themselves up into a flap. Watch as your attacker curses your name and gets their readers all worked up and redistributing the message all over. Read the comments about how stupid you are, how the attacker is God’s gift to the Internet and how all of those starving babies in Africa are starving because you did that to them! When the excitement has reached its peak, you want to bring the conversation over to your media channels and use it to heat up your own goals and views.

Talk Transition

It’s actually cool that you new attacker friend is giving you all this attention, but you need to make sure that it takes place on your blog, your Facebook pages, your twitter channel and not their own. In hopes of achieving this move, you’ll probably have to put your foot in the fire a little. Points to touch upon will have to cover: 1) What happened 2) What your responsibility was, & 3) how it all moved forward.

Whatever it may be, explain what happened and live up to any guilt that you may have had. Do not attempt to look innocent. Do not try to restructure the story; the truth always comes out anyways. Invite the attacker to talk about the matter and remember to be logical, calm & soothing, even if the conversation happens out of the public eye.

A useful note: If the conversation goes offline, the golden rule is that you make 100% sure that you never, ever say anything in an email, IM or even phone conversation that you wouldn’t want pinned up in a blog post for the whole web to see. Because sometimes people are jerks and they will slap your private conversation up on the Internet.

Chillax

In reality, the attacker can complain and wail and throw a fit all they want. The influencers have the mindshare, the larger audience and the credibility. If you want to stand a chance to win any argument in the web’s court of public opinion and avoid being written off as just another bloke with a profile, you need to remain calm. Be the logical one. Realize that while this is all a game, it’s a game you can win. Play with strategy.

You’ll probably have to deal with a lot of drama once you bring the crazies and their heat over to your court, now would be the time to take a chill pill. Regardless of what they say, be gracious and polite. Handle the situation without letting it handle you.

Milk the Attention

Once you’ve had your say on the situation, move on - both over social media and in your head. You can’t hold hostility toward the attacker. There’s no time. It’s time to start leveraging the hell out of what just happened.

The biggest #fail you can make is to simply shutdown. After a crisis, many will go into hide under their desks until the storm goes away and people stop looking at them. It isn’t a good idea – don’t do it. After a public incident as such, you’re going to have a lot of new eyeballs watching to see what your next move is going to be. This is the primetime to let your best content out. Don’t pick fights with people to gain attention, that’s cheap, but be the best version of yourself that you know how to be and give everyone a reason to subscribe and stick around. Capture them.

Too many people are afraid of the fires that can break out in the social-sphere. You shouldn’t be. As long as you don’t go looking for them, but realize that if you remain the adult in the room, you’re often going to walk away from this a lot better off than when you went in.