How to Handle a Social Media Backlash

Episode 60: How to Handle a Social Media Backlash

In this episode, Holly Hibbard - Social Media Consultant & emotional intelligence nerd - shares with you...

• why potential social media backlash isn’t a big enough reason to not post your content to begin with
• the moments it has felt like her social media audience turned their backs on her (and how she handled it)
• the types of ways your audience will begin to turn away from you (and why you shouldn’t be concerned with 95% of it)

If you like what you've read so far, I’d love it if you’d SUBSCRIBE to the show, and TURN ON your notifications so you don’t miss a future episode.

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WORK WITH HOLLY IN OCTOBER, 2024 //

• Ready to launch your social media brand quickly and finish your 2024 with elevated impact? Hire Holly as your social media strategist and coach! Book a quick call with me here: https://tidycal.com/thehollyhibbard/quick

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Transcript

Welcome to the Holly Hibbert Show. I'm Holly, a relationship coach and emotional intelligence nerd turned social media consultant. This podcast is for coaches, consultants, and service providers ready to simplify their social media strategy, create impactful content, and grow their audience without the overwhelm. If you want to attract dream clients and free up more time for the things that you love, you are in the right place. Let's make social media work for you starting now. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Holly Hibbard Show. I am your host, Holly Hibbard. Today, I want to share with you what to do when your social media following turns against you. Wow. That sounds pretty deep and maybe kind of scary. And if you are listening to the show and you are only a social media user for friends and family and connections, great. You can absolutely have people turn against you on your platform. But more importantly, we're here to talk about your ability to grow your audience, attract great clients to your business and the service that you provide. And as your audience grows, you are going to have people comment, respond, with your emails. They'll unsubscribe. Sometimes people say things that are pretty rude. And how do we handle that? So let me start with the bad news, I guess. The bad news is that when you put yourself out there, that is the only way to learn how to work through those moments. You really have to learn how you're going to respond in real time. Because when someone in your audience turns against you or has something negative to say about you, you're gonna have whatever emotions or thoughts or feelings you have. We can't really predict that until it happens. So in the moment, the bad news is that's the only time you can really learn how you're going to respond or react when you feel like they're going against you or against your knowledge of what you have to share. Now, the good news here is that if you are a person who has not put a lot of social media content out just yet, or let's say you have, but you're in a season now with the service you provide as a coach or a consultant or any other service provider or business owner, you're in a season where you do wanna grow your audience further. That means the more your content is showing up, the more it's going to be shown to people, Which means your audience is going to grow, and that audience is going to be comprised of people who really like what you have to say, kind of like what you have to say, are indifferent to what you have to say, and people who don't like what you have to say. But in the beginning stages, if this is your first, 5th, 10th time, you're putting content out there that is incur that's teaching your audience about what you do, that's teaching people about what your services are or just supporting them in some way, that is not usually the same season where adversaries show up. That is usually not the same season where you are just getting started, where people decide, you know what? I'm going for the juggler jugular. Like, I'm gonna say something really horrific right now, if ever. So in the very beginning, it's so important that you ride the wave of the dopamine hits that keep showing up. And here's what I mean by this. For myself, I'm a creative person, meaning I like to create stuff. And creativity comes in a lot of different ways. I happen to be an idea generator. I generate ideas very, very quickly, and my gift is as a teacher. So a lot of what I'm teaching through my show and my social media content is what to do with all those ideas. I'm breaking down the process for my audience. So my version of creativity looks like that. Your version of creativity might be in the actual type of content that you create. It might be in the type of service that you provide. But if you are putting content on social media, you are a creator or a creative to some capacity, whether it is with written word or it's with video or it's with an artistic form or it's with your coaching or your advice, you are creating these ideas or these products or these services or this education style of curriculum for other people. And when we are putting that out there, we hope that our I our ideas are really well received. In the very beginning, your initial audience is probably people who already know you. They're people who are your friends, your family, even close or semi close acquaintances. They're people who are already your clients, past or previous or current. And that bodes well because that means that as soon as you start getting consistency with your social media content, that audience, your let's say, your warm audience, they're going to like your stuff. They're gonna reflect if they enjoy it in some way. They're gonna open the emails that you send them. They're going to like or comment or subscribe to the things that you are putting out there into the digital space. And what that creates is a moment of joy. It creates a dopamine hit, a little hit of that feel good chemical in your body of, I did it. It's working. They're here. And what's fun about that is that can last quite a long time. There's there's a reason we call it validation for a reason. People are validating that, wow, I liked this idea. I do wanna learn more. People are validating, wow, I never thought about that particular service coming from this perspective or this lens. That's so cool. I wanna learn more about that. So you will initially, with your warm audience, get a lot of that. And, again, it's not common that your adversaries or people that you disagree with or that rather disagree with you, it's not common that they show up right from the beginning. So it's important that when you're getting started, you really place your focus on what is working. Wow. I emailed 50 people and 10 people open the email. Right? Or I made this post and I have a 100 Facebook friends and 10 of them liked it. And just start watching that people are responding, period, in some sort of positive way. That's going to help to boost your sense of confidence in the way that you present your content and also the content itself, and also reassure you and build more confidence in you that people do want to hear what you have to say. And that's all gonna be important for later on if and when an adversarial comment or negativity does show up. So in time, what are the ways that people can, quote, turn against us? I'm not saying that when people do this, it's always intentional. Because a lot of times, it isn't. For example, if you have an email list, which you should, by the way, if you do not and you need help with that, leave me a comment on the show because I wanna know if you need help with your email list. And if you have an email list, it is so common that every single time you send out an email, you're going to have a person unsubscribe. If not multiple people unsubscribe from the emails. It's also super common when you are emailing your list that you are going to have a list of countless people and not the majority are gonna be the ones that open it. It's gonna be the minority who open up the email. And you've got like it's so important to focus on the positive that is happening and not on the negative that isn't. Because if every time I sent an email to my email list and I see that one person unsubscribed, but I'm ignoring the 125 people that did open the email, oh my goodness, it will it will wreak havoc on my motivation, my mental state, most importantly, my confidence. And we wanna have these mental health positivity, affirming, confidence building tools in place, so that when you do have people do things that make you think they don't wanna hear from you anymore, we have evidence to the contrary. Okay? So one way people start to quote turn against you is they are unsubscribing from your list, from your email list, or from your content, and they stop following you. That is just part of it. It is just part of it. And I'm using the phrase turn against you because I'm gonna get there to, like, a little more severe, but there are little these these little moments can still really stick it to you, especially if we're looking at a platform like TikTok or like Instagram, where there are bots that are designed to go in and follow a bunch of random accounts with the hope that you are going to follow that bot account in return. And then as soon as they get your, reciprocation of a follow, they they unfollow you. So if you're with one paying attention to how many followers you have, let's say, on Instagram or on TikTok, and you notice one day, you go up five followers in a day, and you're like, oh, that's so exciting. And then the next day, you will lose 3 or 4 of them. If you don't know what's happening behind the scenes, you can get that feeling of, it's just like the unsubscribe thing. People are in and then they're out. They don't want what I have to say anymore. They're not interested in my content. I was right. I shouldn't put myself out there. Our mind can just spiral and make up a worst case scenario, and it's not real. It's not true. Other ways that people can, quote, turn against us in social media is obviously negative comments. Okay? So negative comment, like I said, this is not typical for the very beginning of a content creator's journey, unless you have a very large following that is being shown to non followers on a regular basis. So for example, when you go and you post to Instagram, there are there's a little button in your in your Instagram stories and on your Reels, for example. So let's talk about Instagram Reels. If I look at an Instagram Reel and I click the insights button, it tells me this percent of the people that saw my video are my current followers. That means they're people that already know me, have heard my stuff, click the follow button on their own. And this percentage of people are people who do not follow you at all. So these are just let's call them strangers off the street. This is not my warm audience. These are not people that know me. These are people who are unfamiliar with me. And if I so there's always going to be a blend of people who know you and people who don't. And the more consistently you post, the higher that percentage of non followers is going to be that sees your content, which is a good thing. Because we want non followers to see your content and how awesome it is so that they can then follow you and then subscribe and then maybe utilize your service or buy your product or whatever it is. So we do want people following us that are non followers. That's why I'm always an advocate, especially on TikTok and Instagram, for having a public profile as opposed to a private one. Because if you're posting to a private profile, you're posting to people that you know you know them, they know you, you can keep things kinda under wraps, but you're really not getting genuine feedback then of what people think about your content and if it really resonates with them. Because family and friends, if they're given the chance to like something and they actually do, they're gonna do it. They're typically not the ones that are gonna be commenting the negative stuff. So we've gotta keep our stuff public and know that those non followers are gonna come in. The larger your audience grows and with the algorithm, the more people that get shown your content that aren't your followers currently, again, that's a good thing. But it does bring the higher, let's say, risk of somebody commenting something that just seems off or rude. And to be honest with you, I I have a couple stories here. Okay? I'm trying to think if I wanna talk about that now. Then I'll just go I'll just lay out the story. So when I first started my business in 2013, 2014, I hired a business coach, and, oh my goodness, like, YouTube was barely a thing. Facebook was a thing, but it was still I mean, it was it wasn't what it is today in 2024. But I my business coach had me create, like, a 3 part video series that I was going to let people sign up for my email list, and I'll send you this free video series on how to live your best life. This is well before we were using phones to record everything. Like, I I went all out to make this thing. And I remember starting my email list, and I'm putting this offer out there and saying, you can sign up to catch this free course. I put so much time into, like, putting it on a website and so many unnecessary things. But I was new, and this is what I did when I was new. Spent a lot of time on it, a lot of energy. And I remember within 1 week of my video course being out there, it was like tips to live your best life. I it was all, like, super positive and very bumper sticker wisdom. Right? Somebody I got an email on a like, or an email or a comment on the video that I had created. I'm one of the 3. And the person said in this comment, this isn't ins like, you are not I remember the words, you are not inspiring at all. This is going to help nobody. This is so ridiculous. But I remember distinctly the words, you are not inspiring at all. People, I think I had oh, I don't even know if I had to guess. I probably had, like, 15 people on my email list. I mean, narrow it down. Right? And I was so crushed by that comment. You are so not inspiring at all. And I thought, how did this person know my deepest wound? Like, push that button. That's so random. Out of all the people in the world, somebody watched this video and that was their first thought, and they thought to comment or send me an email back and tell me that. And it really crushed my confidence. It took me out. I mean, it just took me out. I don't think I I never made any other content after that until many, many years later. And I let it get to me. I really let it get to me. And And I bring this up because I did some detective work, which wasn't that hard. And it turned out that the sender of the email was someone that I used to work with, and they no longer liked me or were friends with me, and they created an email account that belonged to their deceased sister. That's how I recognized the email. Because I saw the name and I'm like, wait a minute. I think that's, like, my former colleague's sister's name who's no longer with us. And that person went to great lengths to make sure that I was told that I am not inspiring. And unfortunately, it worked. It put a number in in my mind of like, okay, maybe I don't have what it takes. So I share that because that is a very extreme example of someone going out of their way to be your adversary and turn against you. And lord knows what else she was telling people or spreading rumors about me or I don't know. It doesn't matter. Okay? It doesn't matter at this point. But in today's day and age, it ain't that deep. Okay? When people comment on your stuff, they're not really going for that kind of thing. So let me update you on the last time I had tons of adversarial comments on a video. In 2020, I created a TikTok account. I was invited to a program to or applied to a program to be a TikTok like, an educator on TikTok, like, to teach about a topic. So I went on TikTok, created an account, and I was teaching about relationships. And my account was growing pretty quickly, like, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick, quick. And what ended up happening is I had a video that went viral, like, actually viral. And I think to this day, it landed at, like, 950,000 views. To my knowledge, it still never hit a 1000000 views, but it was pretty darn close. Now what's beautiful about this is I had thousands of comments on this TikTok video. Thousands. And I also gained thousands of followers. The majority of the comments were protect this woman at all costs. Like, yes, this is spot on. This is so good. But I had probably about 5% of the people that hated what I had to say. And based on the topic and being relationship based, a lot of it was from a wounded perspective. They've been through hell. I get that. But then you also had another 5% that didn't comment about the content at all. They commented on my speech impediment. They're like, you have a lisp. You sound like this character from this cartoon. I can't even remember. And they're just knocking me for what I look like, what I sound like, like and then you've got other people commenting on the content. So in that, that was that was tough. And that was something that I didn't even have to experience until I had something that went that big. And I've never had something go that big since. And that was like 3 or 4 years ago at this point. So the things we worry about about people coming for us in the comments, it's never gonna be what you think. It wasn't people shredding me for the content itself, or even that didn't really bother me that people disagreed with the content because that's par for the course. You put yourself out there. You know people are gonna disagree to some extent. But when people are making personal attacks against, like, what I sound like and what and I'm just so I started getting snarky. I'm like, yeah. I I have a hearing defect that I've had since I was a baby, and I do have a small list, especially when I get really excited and I talk really loudly or not loudly, but quickly. And then, of course, I would put that in the comment, and I'd copy and paste the comment to all people that would say the same thing. And, they're like, oh, sorry, dog. Sorry, bro. Didn't mean that. Didn't didn't know. And that's true. That is absolutely true. There is a certain pitch I cannot hear. I've been with this way my whole life. Hearing deficiency goes in my family. So if you ever wondered how I'm a professional speaker and good at this, but I sound like what I sound like some people really like it. Some people think I got my tongue pierced. That's another comment that I get all the time. Is your tongue pierced? No. It is not. I just have a speech impediment, that I can correct if I choose to slow down. But I talk very quickly because I get very excited. I share all this with you so that you know that people are gonna say stuff. They're gonna say stuff that makes no sense. Very rarely are they gonna go for the jugular. So I'm gonna end this today with one final story and the final way that people can turn against you, and this is something that comes back to you. I have been blessed enough to start and host 2 massive Facebook groups in the last decade. And one of them, which I no longer have, grew to 6,000 women nationwide. A lot of them were located, like, East Coast because I've always lived, you know, Eastern time zone in the US. And with that Facebook group with and I created another one that's, like, a local group to make friends, and that one has, you know, 25100 people. And those are stories for a different day. And I've told them in other episodes, in other places, and in my long long form videos in different places. But I wanna talk about that 6,000 member group. The name of the group, at one point in my life, it really resonated with me. The values of it really resonated for me. I created a group. I created an online community where I wanted to give women a place to talk openly about things that were important to them and that they could feel safe in having these conversations. A place where it was no judgment, no pitching, no spammy stuff. Like, I truly wanted a community in the digital space. And I would show up to that group, and I would put content in that group. I would share my thoughts, my ideas, like I said. Anything I felt creative about, I would, quiz them on things. I would do videos. And as a result of that, and I'm more most importantly, I would encourage the women in that group to do the same. So it wasn't just a Holly show. Right? And it grew. And then people invited their friends, and then it grew again, and it grew again, and it grew and it grew very, very big. And a few years into this, the name of the group specifically, there was a this is part of I don't even remember what year it was, you guys. It was so crazy. But the last word in the name of the group was the word tribe. And in the past 4 or 5 years here, we are becoming more aware of certain words in the vocabulary in in the certain words that we use that are deemed inappropriate by different cultures and different populations, and for a very good reason. When you know better, you do better. Right? So I didn't know that this word I didn't understand at the time that tribe was controversial to some people of some cultures and some, some yeah. From different places around the world, different countries. And I had a very large group and a very diverse group at that. And there was a member who was incredibly upset that I had this word in the title of my group. And the group was very divided because no one else had ever said anything about this word being controversial or inappropriate. And instead of this member of my Facebook group coming directly to me and having a conversation and saying, hey, did you know that's not really okay to use that word? And here's why, and I wanted to let you know. She didn't do that. What she did is she went into the group and put me on blast in front of everybody and called me all sorts of things from inauthentic to I claim I care so much about people, but yet I do this. I mean, really slammed my character in my home. Like, the way that I think about a Facebook group, like, this is a living room. You just came into my living room and, like, pooped on the floor in the middle of the room, and then said to me, clean it up. Like and that was so hard. That was so difficult. And I think I think that of everything I ever went through in terms of where people could, quote, turn against me, I think that one hurt the most because I was not directly approached. And, it felt it just really felt terrible. I removed the word from the name of the group, and then I was called being I was called out for being fake because I was only doing it because somebody made me. But no it's like I couldn't win no matter what. This person was determined to dislike me no matter what my choices were. And then it divided my group because half of the group saw the perspective of this woman as did I. Like, I I agree with her perspective. I had no fight against it. It was just I went ignorant because I honestly didn't know. And I was willing to shift it, correct it, address it, whatever it was. But what I wasn't okay with was her slamming my character as a person as if this was an intentionally hurtful thing that I did. And I was so upset by this entire occurrence, and the group became divided because half of the people, not half, but there were a large number of people in the group that said, leave the word. Leave it. Why are you why are you succumbing to this one person? And some of that dialogue was, like, very hateful toward this woman. And I'm like, okay. We're not doing that. I don't do that here. Why are you all now, like, turning your back against her and being rude to her? It was just I was not okay with that either because, again, this was a community I built online. This was like a home for me, a living room for me. And I'm like, I'm not okay with people treating people this way. And then I had another small portion who agreed with this woman and also was like, we're out of here. We're leaving this. You know, Holly is a fake. Holly doesn't care about people. Holly and it's just like none of it was true. But I couldn't stop that. So those people left the group and I was totally okay with that, but it it tainted it. And a a number couple years after that, my personal values changed, where, like, the context of the group was very much based in, like, spiritual new age movement. And I, you know, coming back to my life as a Christian and living my life now as a Christian, I saw that my group and what I created, didn't align with my faith and with namely the Bible. And that was a personal choice for me. And you're gonna have choices in your own brand and your own business and your own service you provide as well. You're going to make decisions based on your evolution as a person, and people are not going to understand. I never needed people to completely understand the choices that I made, but I did hope that people would be forgiving and not lash out at me. And I decided to close the group and archive the group. And I think emotionally, it had just taken so much a toll on me, toward the end, after the whole, like, whatever. And because it was a, we're here to be friends and make relationships and share about, like, our our inter like, I don't know what's the word I wanna use. Like, the insides of our life and and have these intimate conversations. Like, that was the nature of the group. And it also invited a lot of people in who were not working on their own healing, I guess. So there were a lot of wounded people who were in there, who were just making it so difficult. So if you are like me in in the season I'm in now where I'm looking to teach teach social media content creation, teach how to have these communities online, teach how to engage your audience, teach how to put your content out there so that you can attract great clients, it's probably not the same tone as what I was creating with that group over there. Like, for me now, it's like, oh, I can teach this, and we can still have conversations about what's real and what's practical. But we're not gonna go to, like, the deep, deep depths of people's woundedness, like some of the conversations in that group did. And that invites in a whole other ball of wax in terms of your audience, what people can say. They will take it out against you. And so I guess that's my final tip. When people do turn against you or comment against you, the best thing that you can do is to practice compassion and recognize that not everyone has lived no one has lived the same life as you. Only you sincerely know your intention and people will take their wounding and the things they're working through and the trauma they've been through. They take it with them everywhere. And they're gonna watch your content and read your content and participate with people in the comments from their own filters. And when you can remind yourself of that in a moment where people are being, like, rude or not so nice about things with you, that can at least start to free it up in your headspace of, okay. This isn't about me. Like, their response truly isn't about me. And there are all sorts of, you know, catch phrases that people say. Things like, what you think about me is is not my problem. I rather would just, I mean, I I hear people when they say that. What works better for me is to focus on the positives that I am seeing and also recognize that when people are expressing themselves in social media, especially because they're hidden behind the screen, they do air out their traumas. They do express themselves through a filter or through a lens of a person that has been hurt or abandoned. And that is that is very real, and we can't escape that. Okay? So that concludes my episode today. I've wanted to so hopefully, I didn't scare you. Okay? Remember what I said at the very beginning. You're 1, only going to understand how you will respond to these adversaries that come at you when you create content. You're only gonna know how you'll respond, how you'll get your head, your mindset, like, back in the groove after it happens. You're only gonna learn that process for yourself, when it happens. And that's why I highlighted these couple of stories for you about how I handled things. Because as your audience grows and your business grows and your popularity grows and your messaging becomes clearer, people are gonna have opinions. It's it's par for the course. It's part of it. So, hopefully, that demonstrated for you some examples of how to work through it. And remember, ride the wave of the dopamine hits from the beginning. Notice what is working. Notice what people are responding to. People are going to unsubscribe. They're going to unfollow. They're going to say these comments that make no sense or seem really stupid to you. It's just like and some of it is gonna get under your skin. But that usually doesn't come until you have, like, a lot of people later on, or or you say something really controversial off the bat. And I don't know that any of you are going for the super controversy, like, right now. But if you are, just be forewarned that people will absolutely do that. So I hope this was supportive for you. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, I will talk to you next time, and I love you, and I mean it. Bye. Thank you for listening. I'm giving you a virtual high five for prioritizing your personal growth. If you enjoyed today's episode, I'd be so grateful if you could take a moment and leave a 5 star review on Apple Podcasts. Share the show with friends and family, or snap a screenshot of this episode and tag me on Instagram at the hollyhibbert. You are not alone on this journey, my friend. I'm always here cheering you on. So until next time, stay curious, stay encouraged, and keep empowering yourself. You are doing better than you know.