BY MELISSA COUTO – FAN FUEL BLOGGER
Dear professional athletes on Twitter,
It’s great that you’re aboard the social media train. Fans simply love being able to follow their favourite athletes, seeing the inner workings of their thought processes come to life over their computer screens. It’s a wonderful thing, most of the time, but beware — it can get ugly.
Fans are fans. They hold you to high standards because they love their team and they love when they win. Whether you are in the MLB, NHL, NBA, NFL, or whatever, if fans think you’re not performing up to par, they will express that.
Have your say: Do you have a great idea for a blog and want to write for Fan Fuel? Email us here. | Time for Canada to cheer for Sens
They have a right to express that. Most of the time, they won’t even attach your handle to their lament, focusing instead on getting a laugh out of their 10s or, if they’re lucky, 100s of followers. Humour is used to mask their frustrations because twitter is all about witty remarks. Sure, some people can be callous, uncouth, and venomous in their rage, but most tweeters mean no harm. The fact of the matter is that fans are typically people with very little influence on Twitter. Only a handful will see a negative comment, unless you choose to address it.
You are a professional athlete in a tough, social media-centered world. Not everyone is going to like you. Not everyone is going to tweet nice things about you. Here are some tips for dealing with the negativity.
1. Don’t tweet about the “haters.” We all know they exist. Most of us don’t care if they hurt your feelings.
2. Don’t tweet at the “haters.” This is what they want. Look up the definition of “troll” on urban dictionary.
3. If they hurt your feelings, don’t let it show on other forms of media. Don’t record a passive aggressive radio interview about it, for example.
4. If someone has substantially less followers than you, ask yourself “is this person going to change a number of peoples’ opinions about me?” The answer is probably no. Your worries should end there.
5. Similarly, remember that anything you tweet will be seen by a large audience. Be cautious of what you put out there. Like mothers of the internet age will tell their children, if you don’t have anything nice to tweet, don’t tweet anything at all.
6. If it’s true, you can’t really be mad. You may disagree with the means by which the tweet is expressed, the language used, etc., but if a factual statement is tweeted, you simply can’t disagree with the content.
7. Re: Blocking. If people are being inappropriate or disrespectful in their language, harassing you, or threatening you, you have a right to block that person. Actually, you have a right to block whoever you want, but if you’re going to start blocking every follower who says something bad about you (true or untrue), sooner or later, you’ll find yourself with very few followers left.
Up to this point, these rules can all be summed up in two words — IGNORE IT. The last one I’ll mention here goes against conventional wisdom, and should only be tried by athletes who can pull it off.
8. If you absolutely feel the need to respond, be witty and be consistent. Fans love interaction, even if it comes in the form of being made fun of (in a clever way). See @LoMoMarlins for examples of how to do this effectively.
Twitter athletes, you live a difficult life — tweeting whenever you feel like it, being generally loved by the masses no matter how stupid your hashtags are — tough gig. Embrace the popularity you’ve been given but take the good with the bad. You may want to be a keyboard warrior, but you’re an athlete first and foremost. You have better things to worry about.
Related read:
More Baseball: MLB weekend wrap up