Blogging Tips

If you’ve been to a live stand-up comedy show and witnessed someone foolish enough to take on the headliner with an onslaught of barbs and caustic bon mots, you probably noticed how the performer didn’t miss a beat in eviscerating the inebriated fool with untouchable, unfathomably witty barbs. 

Almost as if they’ve heard it all before.  Almost as if it had been planned.

The crowd loves it.  The performer loves it. 

The heckler, not so much.  Because they never stood a chance, and the ensuing laughs are completely at their expense.

But when it happens to bloggers, nobody loves it. 

Because your response, tempting as it may be, can’t go anywhere near the acidic agenda of your attacker.  No, you need to take the higher road.

If you don’t, the attacker wins.

Leave the genius beheading to the comic professionals.  For you, the earnest, well-intended blogger, the exact opposite is the desired response.   You need to ask, “what would Ghandi say?” and paraphrase from there.

The only thing you and the headliner have in common in this situation is this: it’s an opportunity for you both to shine. 

You have options when someone attacks you.

One is to ignore it completely.  

But if you do, other readers are left to assume you’ve been legitimately taken down, that you have no worthy defense.  Or worse, no interest in the debate. 

Another option is to strike back with an onslaught of logic and irrefutable defensiveness that paints the attacker for what he/she is: no match for you. 

Even if you do this politely, though, readers will quickly see through this and miss your point.  And you will have missed an opportunity.

The goal isn’t to make the attacker wrong.  The goal is to rise above the tone of the attack and kill them with kindness.  Even if they are wrong.

Because the attacker has just done you a favor.  And you need to seize the moment and make it work for you.

In the world of printed words, nothing is quite as deadly as understated kindness and the coolly polite acknowledgement that what they’re saying is worthy of consideration.  Even if it’s not.

What is worthy in this moment is your ability to stay on top.

Context is everything when this happens.  If the attack waxes personal, that’s a context that can hurt you if you go there, too.  So your first challenge is to shift the context back to the issue at hand rather than the style with which the slings and arrows were thrust at you.

Don’t walk away from the fight.  The trick is to dismantle the intention to pick a fight in favor of engaging the attacker on a different level.  Nothing you can say will piss them off more.

Kill them with kindness. 

Thank them for their contribution to the discussion.  The meaner their intent, the more effective your cleverly turned other cheek will prove to be.

Wondering if this works?  I did, too, at first.  My blog often takes positions on issues of writing fiction that rub conventional wisdom against the grain, and people aren’t shy about telling me so.

Lucky for me I allow my wife to censor these exchanges (she knows me well).  And when I’ve yielded to her more evolved confrontational sensibilities and responded with gratitude for the opportunity to readdress an issue from another perspective – and then, without ever losing the context of cool, completely yet gently dismantling their uninformed take on the subject – I get fan mail.

Readers love a blogger with unshakable confidence in their content and without the slightest need to make an ass out of someone who has already done a fine job of doing so themselves.

So what I do, first and foremost, is thank them.  And it’s genuine.

Because with every attack comes the opportunity to strut your stuff – your professionalism, your empathy, your high-road sensibilities and the complete and total command of your content.

Of course, if the attack is personal you can always go behind the scenes and delete them into oblivion.  But if you do, you just might be missing an opportunity to make this a win-win situation.

A win for you, and a win for the reader, who will come back for more.

As for the whack-job who attacked you, trust me on this: if you don’t engage on their level, they won’t try it again.  Because they’ll know they’ve been bettered.