How To Deal With Trolls on YouTube (Without Losing Your Mind)

You've just spent hours recording, editing, and uploading a video to help people learn from your knowledge and experience. And then, boom, out of nowhere, you get an uncalled for, nasty comment from some YouTube troll or some YouTube hater. And I just want to say congratulations, because as much as it seems like a bad thing, it's actually a good thing. And I'm going to show you how you can handle your haters here on YouTube like a pro. Let's dive in. Hi, my name is Lauren Bateman, and I help course creators leverage the power of YouTube to increase their influence so that they can sell more products and services without burning out. Now, if you're creating content here online, eventually you're going to run across someone who might not agree with what you are saying. Okay? That's. It comes with the territory. Especially if your channel is growing and your visibility is growing. Guess what? The more people that are going to see your content, the more likely it's going to be that someone is not going to like what you're saying or what you're doing. Some of it's because, you know, maybe they're. They're crazy. And some people, it's because they're jealous. All right? I've been doing YouTube since 2017. I have over 550,000 subscribers. So I've had my fair share of haters over the years. And a lot of times, you know, it's people who've spent their entire life studying guitar. They might be a little bit jealous that people are following me. I don't have a degree in music. I just teach people how to have fun with the guitar. And people will tell me all the time, like, I suck. You don't even know how to play the guitar. You're not even a good teacher. And you know what? That's all in. Well, because, you know, those haters don't pay my bills. But if you are someone who gets impacted a little bit more by haters, I'm going to show you what you can do to get them off your back. Now, the first thing is we have to understand that trolls don't provide any constructive feedback to us, okay? They're just. Most of the time, they're just there to complain because they're miserable people. All right? And I understand it can be distracting and it can be hurtful. Especially those first few times you spent so much time making this content, you're like, why is this person doing this? But the worst thing you could do is, is give that person your time and energy. I was helping Some close friends try and do YouTube and do social media, and they both just couldn't get over the fact that people were hateful in the comments. So they let other people's thoughts prevent them from moving forward with creating a very profitable business. So I don't want you to do that. And here's what you can do to get some of these people off your back. The first thing is to set boundaries. And you can do this on YouTube. YouTube has settings on the back end that allow you to block certain comments or certain words, okay? So you could put in, you know, a number of words that someone might say, or if anyone, you know, uses vulgarity or swears, that you don't allow that comment to even appear on your channel. The second thing you do is you can just block inappropriate people from your channel. Now, we don't mind haters so much on my channel because a lot of times what you might find is someone posts a hateful content, and if you have a great community, a great following, you'll notice that your own community, your own people are going to come to your rescue. And this actually increases the engagement on your video. And YouTube likes engagement, whether it's good or bad. They like engagement. And they're more likely to. To share your content and your videos just because of this controversy that's happening in the comments. So flip it that way and think, you know, the haters are actually helping you, even though they think they're trying to tear you down. But every once in a while, we get someone who is, I want to say, like a serial hater. Like, they're basically commenting on almost every single video, and there's nothing productive about it. It's just negative bs. And what we do is we just hide that person from the chann. So all you do is you go into the comment, you click the dots next to the name, and you just hide the person from the channel. They can still comment, all right? So they think they're still trashing you on your channel. But by hiding them, you won't see the comments, and no one else on your channel will see those comments either. So if you have someone who's like a serial hater who's really just kind of getting on your nerves, we get those every once in a while. We just hide them from the channel so that they can't, you know, they can't take any of our time and energy because it's not worth it. The other thing is to know when to engage, okay? Because sometimes, you know, we'll get comments because People are watching all over the world. So sometimes there is a legitimate language barrier that someone might not be wording something correctly or it might seem a little bit off, but maybe English isn't their first language. So we will sincerely answer people's questions if it seems. Seem sincere, but if it's someone who just seems crazy, we will ignore them. Okay? And sometimes, you know, if you want to take it a different way, I used to do this with my community back in the day is I used to do what was called the Troll of the Day award. So once a week, I would post on my Instagram and it'd be the troll of the day, and it would be like, you know what the person said and you know what my. My witty response was to that person. And of course, you know, my people would. Would come to the rescue and be like, that's horrible, and this person stinks, and yada yada. So I use the haters as a way to kind of bolster my community and get my people to. To stand with me and, and support me. So there's another way that you can use this hate in a productive way, okay? If you're using it and it's taking you away from. From your work and getting the work that you need to get done, all right, don't engage it. But sometimes if, you know, you're someone like me who really doesn't care what people say, I know there's lots of people out there who take it to heart very much just hide the comments, all right, or block the negative phrases. But if you're someone like me, who sometimes finds it very funny, you can use it to engage your community and bolster your social profile. So sometimes I go over to Facebook and I'd post it on my Facebook to engage people over there, you know, on different social media platforms. So there's different ways to. To either use or ignore the hate. But here's the thing about trolls, okay? It's actually a good thing, okay? Because if you have trolls, it means you're growing, all right? And that comes with growth. It means you're saying something important or you're doing something good and you're actually having an impact on people. And my biggest advice to you is to focus on the people you're helping. So with my friends who kind of gave up on their content creation journey because of comments, they just. They were like, I can't do this anymore. I can't take the comments. And I was like, okay, so you'd rather, you know, give up instead of making like 40, $50,000 a month. You'd rather let someone's hateful comments keep you from having success in life? Don't do that, okay? Haters means you're doing something good. They're probably jealous, they're probably envious and wishing that they could do what they what you are doing. Because the bottom line is if you're getting haters, that means people are watching your content. And if people are watching your content, the chances of people going and buying your products and services increases. Alright? So I highly recommend focus on the people you're helping, okay? Focus on those people because the haters are going to be a very, very small percentage. They're probably never going to buy anything from you in the first place anyway. So again, don't give them time or energy. Focus on the good. Focus on the people who are telling you, hey, this is awesome. You are so helpful. You finally helped the light bulb go off in my head. Focus on those people instead. Because that is why you're here, to help people, not have the haters take your time and energy. Now, if you're someone who wants helpful tips to be a little bit more confident on camera because you are worried, you're like a little nervous about, you know what if someone doesn't I look weird or I look funny and someone makes fun of me, go watch this video over here where I'm going to show you some tips for feeling more confident on camera. Because it can be awkward talking to a camera if you haven't done it very often. So if you're someone who needs help in building confidence on camera while making your content, go watch that video right over there.