There’s an old Norse tale about a woman named Brunhilda. As is the case with many myths, Brunhilda does something to upset someone, and is punished for it in a supernatural way. Her punishment is to sleep in a ring of fire until a hero comes to rescue her. A hero named Sigurd braves the magical fires and wakes Brunhilda from her slumber. With all of the fantastical elements of the story, the feat of walking through fire is somehow dampened.
Have you ever stood too close to a fire? Maybe you were enjoying a bonfire with friends on a cold night, and the popping and crackling kept drawing you closer to the warmth until the sheer heat forced you to take a few steps back. Fire is hot. Magical fire is probably hotter.
The point of all this fire talk is that sometimes there are challenges that don’t seem to be worth the effort.
We’ve had clients who, for whatever reasons, have been inconsistent with social media. A post every other day becomes a post every other week, which then turns into not having posted in the past two years.
What they noticed is, returning to social media after periods of inactivity brought all of the haters and complainers out of the woodwork. If someone had a personal issue or complaint with the business, they took the activity on social media as an opportunity to throw spears and badmouth the business.
So, defeated, these clients fell back into social media silence. The disgruntled few spoke out more than the satisfied majority, which discouraged the company from continuing their efforts on social media.
So they came to us. We began managing their social media, and sure enough there were some disgruntled trolls getting things off their chests. We kept at it, though, posting regularly and building up their social media accounts. We helped them return kind and helpful answers and some of the people who had been cross changed their tunes and even apologized or deleted their negative comments. Pretty soon, the people with nothing nice to say stopped saying anything at all. The bitter grumblers were replaced with cheerful supporters, and now the clients are very pleased with their social media presence.
Pushing through flames isn’t the easiest thing to do. It can be challenging and discouraging, but persevering can be worth the efforts. The challenges aren’t always going to be in the form of negative actions. They can be in the form of no action at all. Posting regularly with no response can be just as discouraging. However, by sticking with it, you can get the results you want.
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