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  • Why people hate you

    Posted on April 13th, 2009 by Spike and currently 7 commenting.

    Hate is a strong word. My grandmother, Etolia Saringer, taught me to never use it unless I really, really, really detested something. Otherwise, I was told to say, “I don’t care for” it.

    Nevertheless, it’s never been so easy to voice your opinion in a public forum due to the rise of social communities, social media and social networking tools. Just Google or Twitter Search the phrase “I hate.” Because of that, there’s a lot of hate out there. And it’s fascinating to me how people deal with the hate. And I’m talking about brands and personal brands alike. Do they immediately lash out the haters? Do they ignore them? Do they try to remedy the situation? It’s fascinating to see if people practice what they preach.

    But I digress.

    Haters are interesting people. Because the thing about your haters is that THEY CARE ABOUT YOU. Enough to expose themselves and voice their opinion. Enough to sit down and take the time to hammer out a blog post. Or spread the word via Twitter and WOM. Haters want you to reach out to them. (Because sometimes your haters are the jealous ones out there.) Haters want you to listen. Yes, listening and acting is even better, but sometimes listening and explaining is enough.

    Nobody hates for no reason. It’s because of a bad experience. Or they feel cheated. Or you didn’t meet their expectations. Or they’re jealous. Or any number of things – but there’s always a reason. Maybe you’re number one in your category. Or maybe you’re the little guy that all the big boys are worried about. (But we love that kind of hate, don’t we?!?)

    So love your haters. Embrace them. Seek them out and sit down with them. Because if you don’t have any haters, something is very, very wrong. It means that you probably aren’t doing your job to push your company and your customers to be better and expect more. If you don’t have any haters then that means that you have nobody that cares deeply about what you are doing.

    And as you’ve probably heard on this blog before, you have a huge opportunity to turn those haters into lovers. And they can become the biggest advocates you’ve ever had.

    Remember, as it is often heard in the Brains on Firesphere, “the haters make the lovers love you even more.”

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  • Justine

    One of my favorite quotes is from Elie Wiesel – “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.”
    The last place I’d want to be is in the sea of mediocrity where you look and feel like everybody else. If nobody hates you then you have to ask yourself what you really stand for?

  • http://sharemarketing.wordpress.com Matt

    I love it when a client says “what if someone says they hate us”. Or, more likely, what if someone says something bad about us. In my opinion, this is the chance to sell like an amway salesperson. Go hard, and long, and throw out all the reasons the person is just wrong.

    But I also get this question: what of a competitor is a hater. I try to explain that people don’t care that much, but honestly, I have no good retort. I tell them that the social web is transparent and that if it is the competition, we’ll know.

    It always strikes me as a little narcissistic as well. As in, the client can’t beat us, so they simply tell people how bad we are. Interesting trend.

  • http://angeladaniels.squarespace.com/ Angela Daniels

    The word “hate” is ranked right up there with “stupid” and “bored” in my house- not acceptable. And at the risk of alienating those with more delicate sensibilities in your audience (**warning: 4 letter words that other households deem worse than “hate” used liberally in this video clip**)- when I think of haters, I think of one of my favorite Katt Williams bits from Pimp Chronicles Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7z_ztMxBgk.

  • http://youngie.prblogs.org Paull Young

    Generally I’ll advise clients to engage detractors, but it’s not always the best course.

    Frequently I’ve found that the reasons for ‘hate’ stem a lot deeper than a customer service issue gone wrong. It’s likely a truly determined detractor will have a deep past with the brand, perhaps an ex-employee or some other relationship that has gone sour (and frequently won’t be disclosed on their part).

    I guess what we see online is that the term ‘hate’ becomes marginalized. By all means if they say they hate you, engage. But if they hate you in the more vitriolic sense of the term it might not be the right approach to engage and add fuel to the fire…

    As with many things social media, it comes down to ‘it depends’.

  • http://rodgerbanister.wordpress.com Rodger Banister

    I couldn’t have said it better myself. People who complain about you, really just want you to listen to them. Social media has made it so much easier to identify these disgruntled folks and create a dialogue with them. By hearing them out, they’ll feel much better, and god forbid, may actually turn into an advocate for you. Companies that make the excuse that there is no time or resources for these conversations are folding their tents up on the front line. If there was ever a definition for ‘low hanging fruit’ this is it. Great article.

  • http://www.shoptheblend.com Billy Bacon

    Look at what Burton Snowboards does: They devise a marketing plot to “Get in the news” and yes some parents hate what they do but it makes the kids love them even more. Because even bad press is press and even better if your URL makes it in the story.

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