Look for opportunities to productively challenge trollish comments. It respects the participation of the more constructive commenters. Also, explicitly state what gives your brand or your staff members credibility.
Everyone’s an expert in their own experience. Look for opportunities to invite conversation around those. Also, stay involved in the conversation you host.
What does your audience want to talk about? How can you tap into their outrage, pride or excitement? There’s also a a lot of humorous back-and-forth in the comments under this post.
Look for opportunities to productively challenge trollish comments. It respects the participation of the more constructive commenters and reminds people that you support civil conversations.
627 likes on a comment! Look for opportunities to explain your process, especially when you see commenters asking questions about it. This comment shows a thoughtfulness behind word choices that not all news consumers would assume journalists have. This example also shows the value of staying involved in the conversations we host and participating in them.
Some issues are easy to have an opinion on and are a natural starting point if you want to train your users to talk to you. Also, stay involved in the conversation you host.
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