Have you ever had a conversation with someone who just wouldn’t let you get a word in edgewise? Whether it’s at work when your boss is asking for feedback on a project he’s working on, or on social media when you’re trying to make friends, this blog article has some great tips on how to reply very kindly!
Why respond to
- Writing a blog post is a laborious task. Not just because it takes time, but also because there are so many things that can go wrong. On the other hand, you can write a nice reply to gracefully close the discussion or make it feel like you’re not being so harsh. “This isn’t a blog, it’s an online tornado.” — Aaron Parrett
- Don’t be too harsh when you reply. It seems obvious but you have to be careful not to come off as too harsh. You need to stay professional and polite with all of your replies, even if the person is completely wrong. If there is any way you can avoid hurting someone’s feelings (even just a bit), do it! 🙂
- Respond promptly. The key to being polite is to respond as quickly as possible, even if it’s about something small. If you leave a comment on someone else’s blog, write your reply and hit submit. Then wait for the person to come back and notice it. They will thank you for responding so quickly (and maybe also less grumpy).
- Be positive. If the person has a point, try not to attack them or criticize them too strongly. Instead, compliment them on their idea or their information or even the way they worded their sentence. If you have a compliment to give, make sure it is positive. Instead of saying “you’re wrong,” say “I like your example.” It really does boost your credibility and makes people more receptive.
- Be polite about your disagreement or criticism. You don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings or be rude, so don’t bring up an issue that stems from something bad that happened between the two of you in the past. Instead, just discuss _. This might seem like a no-brainer, but the fact is that most people don’t think about this. If you’re going to disagree or complain about someone’s writing, try to do it politely and avoid negative comments about their appearance or weight. Just focus on the message, not so much on the messenger.
- Keep your facts straight. This one gets kind of complicated and you need to take some time to practice it if you haven’t done so already, but basically you need to make sure that you have the facts straight when discussing your writing with others. It’s really easy to get confused about this, especially if you’re talking about something that happened a long time ago and which might have been misinterpreted. For example, if someone says “I don’t think my characters are likable”, it’s natural for you to go into detail about why your character is not likable or what exactly they’ve done wrong.
- But stop and ask yourself: What kind of information do you actually have about this character? How do you know that you don’t like them? Do you even know what character they are? Is it possible that your information is wrong or if you’ve been misinterpreting their actions/words/behaviour? If the answer to all three questions is yes, then it’s probably best not to delve into detail until you’ve got more information. You’re going to be frustrated if your characters aren’t likable anyway, but the point here is to extract information that you can use to build your own characters.
- Be warned: Some of these questions are going to be particularly difficult for some people to answer and/or not easy to ask at all. If this describes your situation, then consider taking a break from the challenge until you’re ready to continue.
- Once you’ve finished answering all the points, read them over once more before you write anything down. This is a good time to think about how they match up with each other and with your story, so that you can make changes if need be.
- If you have any questions ask them now, as you’ll probably want to write down some answers while they’re still fresh in your mind.
- Write down the exact wording of each answer you gave to make sure that it’s just exactly what you said, and then move on to the next question for now. Once this is done, start working on your story. It’s not a race or anything like that , so don’t worry about being too slow.
- When you’ve finished, you should have a complete outline of the story, with no major plot points missing or anything like that.
Tips for good messaging practice on Twitter
One of the most important skills you can develop is how to reply very kindly. This is a skill that has both immediate and long-lasting benefits. If you want people to view your comments as thoughtful, engaging, and helpful, then you should be sure to practice nice replies. When practicing this skill, you should try not to use sarcasm or snarky comments in your replies.
