While social media is indispensable for business success, it can also be a source of volatility and reputational risk. Far too often, outrage is rewarded, leaving brands and leaders feeling vulnerable and unprotected.
This topic was the focus of a recent conversation with internationally recognized speaker and consultant Denise Hamilton, author of the book Indivisible: How to Forge Our Differences into a Stronger Future, who sat down with Zoetica Media founder Kami Huyse at Social Media Breakfast of Houston to share her expertise on how to dial down rhetoric, both inside and outside organizations.
Social Media Professionals Are On the Frontlines
Unfortunately “the reality is that outrage is profitable, anger makes money,” says Denise. So whether they realize it or not, social media professionals are on the frontlines. “You went to bed one night as… a social media professional and you woke… literally on the front line of the biggest battle.”
Because of what the social media algorithms feed us, “we are changing, our habits are changing, our appetites are changing around what we consider entertainment, what we consider appropriate. And so in a lot of ways, you're at the front line of reshaping and redefining what is okay and what's not okay.”
She also argues that since the environment and circumstances we operate in have changed due to algorithms exemplifying division and hostility, “the rules [we follow] have to change with them.”
Anger is Being Weaponized to Divide People
Sowing division isn’t merely a byproduct of the online realm, it’s often the goal. “There are forces, there are people who benefit from us not being in community. Community is extremely powerful,” she explains, noting that, “there are forces that that benefit from us being at each other's throats.”
When she notices external forces trying to negatively manipulate her, she asks herself, “if I feel that knob turned up to nine or 10, do I have tools and practices to take me down to a three?”
The Importance of Figuring Out Whether Stories Are True
Part of dialing things down is recognizing the stories we believe. From news headlines to cultural myths, stories shape how we see the world. “Stories are incredibly important. They tell us who's the good guy and who's the bad guy, who gets to live happily ever after, who's the hero. They tell us how to live.
But one of the problems that we have is a lot of our stories aren't true,” she points out. “Think about having a story that tells you to wait in the woods. Somebody's going to come along. Somebody's going to help you. Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, I could go on and on and on…”
That’s why she stresses the need to carefully examine the stories we live by.
Stories are particularly powerful when they “touch on a deeply held belief, [a] tradition,” she explains, so if someone is “trying to present you with a different idea, a different concept, you defend that [old] story.” In other words, “we have messages that are so deeply entrenched in how we see the world [that] it's really critically important that you find the courage to excavate, pull those stories out, examine them, and make sure [to check] if they're true.”
People Often Cling to Their Broken Stories and Resist Change
The beauty of social media is that it offers a plethora of different opinions and viewpoints, which, as Denise points out, provide “unlimited stories, unlimited ideas.”
With an abundance of competing narratives, social media can expand perspectives, but often also hardens opposition through “unlimited challenge to our deeply held beliefs. And so, it's just this cocktail of conflict and challenge” since people “love their broken stories, their broken language, their broken understanding of things.”
This stubborn clinging can make truth-telling difficult. “When you come along and you're trying to hold up truth, accuracy [and] really trying to communicate with clarity,” she warns, “you're not starting from a neutral position. You're starting from a position of [other people] really having profound opposition to any kind of change.”
It’s therefore not enough to just share high-quality information. “You have to do more. You have to understand the counter narrative that you’re facing.” That requires deep listening and being aware of the viewpoints around you.
Social media professionals are often the first to detect shifting sentiments, “which is why the roles that you all play in your organizations are so important. You are the listening ear. You see the first comments. You see the first resistance. You see the first ideas that are challenging to the information that you're putting out.”
Fight Fire With Water, Not With Fire
She says that the only effective way to deal with online criticism and even hospitality is to “fight fire with water, not with fire.”
Inappropriate behavior doesn’t need to be tolerated, which is why she also suggests people delete comments that are intended to create division and strife. While “we have to figure out how to disagree without destruction,” when it’s clear someone isn’t interested in genuine discourse but rather trying to ‘win’ at all costs, it’s perfectly acceptable to delete content or take other corrective action.
Sometimes, the nefarious content or attacks aren’t even from real people. “There is a large percentage of artifice [on social media] and so you can be literally spending your days engaging with things that are not real people…”
This doesn’t negate the value of feedback or respectful disagreement, she emphasizes. But “when it shifts to something else, it's okay to take the necessary measures to keep that vessel safe for quality communication. I don't think quality communication happens accidentally.”
Creating boundaries is good. “When someone has a profound intention to sabotage that, I want to empower you to not let them do that.”
It’s Ok to Allow Disagreement, as Long As There Are Rules
Setting boundaries doesn’t mean online communities and other environments should seek to create artificial disagreement-free zones. Doing so risks creating bubbles.
Instead, she explains, “I just want disagreement with rules. So if I put out a product and somebody says, ‘Oh, this gave me a rash.’ [I can respond with] ‘Oh my gosh, please. I would love to hear more about this. Can you give me some more information?’ Like I would love that interaction. [But if] I put out a product and somebody's like… ‘you know, this is made from the blood of babies,’ I'm taking that post down.”
She reminds leaders that “it is okay to set rules for how you interact in a space that you are in charge of” and not overcompensate by tolerating toxicity. “We're so worried about that that we've gone [to] the opposite end of the spectrum that we let people run through our brains with their dirty feet.”
Be Intentional About What Content You Share
Intentionality also applies to what we amplify and warns against carelessly forwarding misinformation.
“When you calculate how much we forward things and share things that are not true — and we share things that we literally do not want to see in the world,” we need to take a step back and “kind of check ourselves, ‘ok, so I not like this comment because it disagrees with something that I personally believe and so I'm shutting down the discourse, or is this a hateful comment?’”
Truth Still Matters
Denise is concerned about where society is heading. “I think we're really in trouble,” she says. “I think we have literally moved into a posttruth reality.” This makes bridging differences more difficult. “So this idea of how can you build across difference when you don't even have the same fact patterns, you don't even have the same foundation is really, really difficult.”
The solution, she says, requires intention. Pointing to the title of her book Indivisible, she says that “the whole idea is it is going to take an active posture for us to course correct where we are not sending all the oxygen in the room to the most toxic person in it.”
It’s also about modeling for the next generation. We need to be “committed to modeling for our children how we handle disagreement, how we talk through issues, how we do research, [determine] what a fact is, what truth is, how we can model patience in difficult conversations. These are all skills that, y'all, we are losing [but that are’ valuable to our survival — literally – as the human race.”
With the lightning speed of AI development, this work is even more urgent. “If we don't figure out a way to double down on our humanity it will be lost,” she warns. “[I try to ] get people to just pause, just slow down a little bit. Don't react instantaneously. Be thoughtful, be strategic, and you can only do that if you actually understand the game that you're playing on the field, and I think very often we really really don't.”
Focus on Your Community and Audience
It’s easy to get distracted by critics and trolls, but she encourages people to remember who they’re really speaking to. “I don't have to chase every single person to agree with me. My audience is not the entire world. My people are my people,” she says. “I do a lot of work in DEI. I don't go to clan rallies trying to convince them, [saying] ‘please come to my position.’”
Having clarity prevents compromising one’s values and mission. “Sometimes we bend so much… that we compromise our actual community, our actual charter of what we're here to do.”
She also cautions against assuming everyone is at the same stage of understanding. Using inclusion as an example, she says she sees people “on a continuum from zero to 10, [with] 10 being… the folks that read all the books, do all the things, they got it all figured out, and zero… they don't even know what the letters DEI stand for.” The problem arises when “we really want to talk like everybody's in the seven, eight, nine, 10, and they're not. Most people are in the four, five, six, and way more people are in the one, two than we want to admit.”
For brands, this means accepting that “you have that whole spectrum in your audience plane, and…you're just not going to make every single person happy. But you can treat every person with respect and dignity…. You have to stay true to the principles that you hold dear and value. And that should come out in every decision that you make and every communication that you make.”
She argues that “there's no more important skill right now than self-regulation…. If you bring the hot, hot energy, if you come in hot to every conflict, you're not going to be effective.”
Ultimately, effectiveness requires being grounded. Leaders must embrace “this idea of positioning yourself in reality, of…understanding the game that's on the field, and making sure you're playing the real game, not the game that's in your head.”
To hear all of Denise’s insights and recommendations, watch the full podcast.