I was cruising through one of my social media feeds the other day, and encountered a situation caused by a couple of well-intentioned people making simple mistakes. No big deal, right? We make them all the time.
Um, yeah…as it turned out, VERY big deal. Here’s the scenario:
Person A, Person B, Person C and Person D are having a conversation in a closed social media group. Person A asks what time doors open/what events held where for a particular event, not realizing that Person E already provided this information in a separate post to the group. Person C suggests that Person D might want to remove Person A’s comment, as the question has already been answered. Thinking that this makes sense and will cause less confusion, Person D goes ahead and removes Person A’s comment. Person A gets completely pissed off and blasts back with an “I can’t believe you censored me for that question” response for all to see. Explanations and apologies are posted for all eyes by Persons B, C and D, but the damage is already done, and the consequences are still unfolding.
In fairness, none of the people in this story are experienced community managers; they also don’t know the best practices. However, the mistakes they made could’ve been easily avoided with just a little bit more thought to the possible consequences.
While it might seem logical to remove a question that’s already been answered from the comment feed, it doesn’t take into account that the person asking it might not have seen the other post; especially since it wasn’t within the comment thread where they asked their question. Then there’s the little matter of whether its removal is likely to open a can of worms that no one wants to deal with.
Here’s the “best practices” nutshell version. Unless it’s spam or in violation of the group’s policies, it’s seldom a good idea to remove a comment or post. It’s better to just leave it up there. Why? Here are some of the easy reasons: You’re less likely to piss people off. Your actions probably won’t require apologies or have unintended consequences…which can get bigger and last much longer than you’d think. There are fewer hard feelings to tiptoe around, which means better group interaction. And for an extra bonus? Other group members often take it upon themselves to deal with the repeated/annoying/”what were you thinking?!?” questions and issues for you.
So..the next time you’re tempted to just delete a comment/question/post that’s annoying you (for whatever reason), think before you do. Because simple mistakes aren’t always so simple, especially in social media.
Have any “war stories” you want to share? Feel free to leave them in the Comments section!
Photo credit: David Castillo Dominici
Inspiration comes in many forms, from many places, events, things and people. Success often comes from inspiration, but almost never without putting in a lot of work. Hard, unglamorous, often tedious work that’s fraught with mistakes and anxiety. So how do you get from inspiration to success? Do the work. 