Trent Reznor and his Nine Inch Nails b%$@!slapped their way to the front page of success in Social Media by doing just what all the social media experts say to do. They blindly jumped in and tried to connect with as many people as possible.
Reznor recently posted a letter on the NIN forum expressing his stance on Social Media:
“The reason no record label knows how to market anything to new media is they don’t live there. They don’t get it because they don’t use it. What you’ve seen happen with the marketing and presentation of NIN over the last years is a direct result of living next to you, listening to you, consuming with you and interacting with you. Directly. There’s no handlers or PR people here, it’s me and my guys – that’s it. There’s no real plan, even – it’s just trying to do the right thing that respects you the fan, the music, and me the artist. That’s the goal – a mutual and shared respect.”
Transparency was the rule of the day and we learned a lot about the people behind the band. Things seemed to be going well. Interaction was at an all-time high and NIN seemed to be the glory child of Social Media success.
Then things started to go sour. NIN’s fundraising efforts for Eric De La Cruz resulted in more than $.5million for the cause…as well as some intense criticism. A horde of trolls, emboldened by the anonymous nature of online interactions, began chasing Reznor over Twitter, online forums, and through blogs.
The saying goes “no good deed goes unpunished” and the trolls were dedicated to punishing Reznor for his efforts.
In his own words, “I watched some of you get more engaged because you started to realize there’s a person (flaws and all) back there, and I watched some of you recoil in horror because I’m not what you projected on me.“ Because Reznor made himself available as a human with a personality, he also opened himself up to those who spout bile just to get a response.
He finished with, “I will be tuning out of the social networking sites because at the end of the day it’s now doing more harm than good in the bigger picture and the experiment seems to have yielded a result. Idiots rule.”
You can read the rest of his post but the point remains clear: A small group of haters ruined his experience.
A few weeks back, I had a conversation with Darren Rowse from Problogger about a blog that seemed bent on ruining his good name. I reflected on the bilious posts thrown at me and offered him my mantra: “Haters are just fans with frowns.” He laughed but we both knew that a mantra doesn’t fix the pain of being attacked without good reason. If you are truly interested in engaging your community you will find impossible to completely ignore the haters.
I don’t have an ending for this post. There’s no dramatic conclusion. I have some definite ideas about how businesses can make the most of social media but I’m still foggy on a good way to approach the haters who simply want to hate for personal reasons. Feel free to ramble. I’m grateful for you.
