How to Deal with All the Negativity

By now, we all know that one of the prices you pay for opening up a real dialogue with your audience is that the feedback you get isn’t always going to be positive – or even nice. It’s everywhere you go in social media – from blog comments to Facebook Walls to Twitter.

How to – and even whether to – respond to the negative criticism can be tricky, if not frustrating. That’s why Mashable put together a “how to” specifically geared at responding the right way to the comments you need to respond to – and ignoring the ones you don’t. The key is staying positive, and it starts with separating the legitimate beefs from the trolling spammers. In other words, step 1: take a deep breath.

In the end, the open dialogue can be one of the most beneficial aspects of social media, empowering your audience to take control of the conversation.