Learning from Trolls: How to Be Influential with Comments

While media marketers might not put themselves into the same camp as internet trolls, they both have similar goals: getting seen and engaging the audience.

Gigaom’s Martin Belam discusses how sites have deployed countermeasures against drones.Some sites use real IDs (e.g. Facebook) or voting mechanisms (e.g. DISQUS) to shape the comment conversations, but these don’t seem to largely affect the tone or engagement of the commenters.

As Mary Hamilton says:

“In the end, it appeared that actually the tone set early on in a comment thread looked like it influenced comments much more than anything intrinsic about the format or identity system used.”

Being one of the first commenters is the most important factor, whether you are seeking to legitimately engage the author and audience or troll them.

I encourage you to read the entire article, especially if you are running a website with user comments enabled.

Tell us what you think in a tone-setting comment below.

Leave a Comment February 8, 2013