Sometimes what we type in a comment or text doesn’t always get translated and understood as intended. It happens, even with the best wordsmiths out there, because each of us bring to the table our own thoughts beliefs, educational backgrounds, and experiences.
Your Online Reputation: Words can hurt, even if the context wasn’t intended to be
This may mean that something you write that wasn’t intentionally meant to be mean, could be construed that way. I had this happen recently after posting a comment on someone’s blog. Thankfully the blog owner mentioned it, but I recall that my comment wasn’t made to be be negative. Of course, it was a hard pill to swallow because it was the last thing I thought would happen after leaving the comment on their blog.
In this particular, I wouldn’t write off their feelings, as they are as valid as everyone else’s feelings. I just apologized for the misunderstanding. Again, things happen.
Going forward, this just means I need to be diligent and take a moment to re-read what I type before submitting a comment or text. Mistakes happen. It’s so easy when with the Internet, we’re all speeding around and leaving comments or messaging each other. I’m guilty of making them from time to time too, just like this recent incident.
How does this relate to your blog, business, or brand?
As a blog, business, or brand, your online reputation is important. Just like when you went to school when you were younger, and were trying to make friends, some things you may have said may have attracted people to you, or pushed people away from you. What you say is important, even if you don’t believe so.
There are people always paying attention, and reading content. They will react according to how they’ve comprehended the context, whether that content is from type words, audio, and images.
After comprehending your content, they can act on it – whether it’s leaving their own feedback (through a blog comment or reply via social media post), giving a reaction (like, heart, or other available reaction depending on the social network), or even word of mouth. If what you say comes off as mean or abrasive, you may hurt your online reputation.
Because social networks make it easy to connect with many people around the world, this could mean a lost of readers, subscribers, buyers, followers, friends, and more.
Last thoughts on this subject
I’m sharing these thoughts, because I know some of my own friends, followers, and others on social networks have expressed having had similar experiences whether you did it, I did, or someone else did. This post is also a way to hold myself accountable. It’s not to dig into online reputation statistics, and written more as an opinion column.
We all are human and like the old saying goes, we all make mistakes. All that can be done is apologize, learn, grow, and go forward.
This is important to pay attention and be careful of what we say. This is good reminder for people. Thank you for sharing!
Great information and a great reminder for people like me who spend a lot of time using a screen. It seems like it’s so easy to be misunderstood online. A screen doesn’t give all the same context clues as talking in person.
Great post!
I think you’ve hit a valid point, and we all go through this online in some way. I went through a weird experience when I was getting to know other bloggers. They would comment back on my posts, but it was this strange passive aggressive tone. Like they didn’t like my content but they wanted to maintain a relationship. I don’t know but it give me weird vibes, and I immediately wanna do away with that chi lol. Anyways! That was my rant du jour!
That’s really a great reminder for everyone. We should be careful what we say.