When I meet someone who doesn’t understand social media or is leery of using it, one of the main things they ALWAYS say to me is “what if someone says something bad?” I am honest and let them know you will probably face some negativity in some form or another, but it probably won’t be the end of the world situation that you fear. Yes, there are some scary examples that we all hear about- Motrin moms or Kevin Smith and Southwest Airlines, but because you are afraid of what might happen isn’t a reason you should not do social media.  We have had to deal with some negative comments on Ottawa’s Facebook page. They don’t happen every day, but every once in a while. The funny thing is we are never surprised at who writes them. The fans who have gone off the deep end on our page all had some very similar behaviors.  1. They commented A LOT. In our case, they have always been people who seemed the most active and commented on everything. They wanted their presence known.    2. The tone of their comments always had some underlying hostility. These fans’ comments toed the line of negativity from the very beginning, but it wasn’t blatant and in the spirit of transparency, it was important to us that our fans be able to have an opinion. As long as they weren’t just plain rude. 3. They never have a profile picture. Their photo is always of a pet, or a symbol of some sort or just a blank face in general.  Here is how we are dealing with these rogue fans (at the moment)  1. We state clearly on our page that “profanity, rude remarks, and racial slurs will be removed and reported.” That way people know our expectations from the very beginning. We delete any comment that falls with in these bounds no questions asked.  2. Keeping our policy above in mind, we respond by a case-by-case basis depending the wording of the comment itself. Here are some examples that got us to where we are today on our stance of negative comments.   Sometimes our commenters have been angry alumni who have been disappointed by a campus visit or recent change. Depending on the wording of the comment, we may leave it up and respond to him/her directly on the page(transparency) and then I have the alumni director send them a personal message. When this has happened, the person always turns around to be a positive force on the page.  Sometimes our negative commenters have been people who have felt personally unjustified by the university in some way. In one instance we had a lady who was still upset about something that happened about 30 years ago and our Facebook page was her punching bag. We deleted all of her comments(because they were nasty) and she continued to rewrite them. We had no choice but to ban her from our page. We researched her back story and found that she has been attacking the university in one form or another for years. In another instance, a fan was upset about certain student groups being allowed on campus after he saw a student wearing that group’s t-shirt in a photo we uploaded. He made his comment. We responded to it on the page explaining the university’s policy on student groups in hopes he would understand and drop it. He responded back and stated we should change the policy and went into a lengthy rebuttal. After careful thought, we ultimately deleted the entire exchange and sent him a message stating that we understand where he is coming from, but that the photo on our Facebook page isn’t the place for that discussion and it could get out of hand quickly. We explained that we try to keep Ottawa’s Facebook as a place for positive interaction. We learned a lot from this situation that occurred in the span of about 45 minutes. Because his comment was so politically charged, there was no way to change his mind, so indulging him in on the page wasn’t the right thing do to.  In closing, every day is an adventure in social media. Because Ottawa isn’t a huge multi-national corporation, handling negative comments this way works for us. As we grow, this may change. But right now (and always) it will be extremely important that we are genuine, transparent and just plain nice to our fans, followers and connections. Besides, the positive comments far out way the negative and they make social media worth every second.