Episode 405: Are you a rage baiter?
In this episode, Fiona talks about the insidious trend of rage-baiting in marketing and why it's counterproductive for ethical business practices. Tune in!
You'll Learn How To:
The Importance of Kindness in Business
Negative Trends in Online Spaces
Exploring Rage Baiting in Marketing
Ethical Considerations in Social Media Engagement
Building Brand Loyalty Through Positive Connections
Long-Term Impact of Marketing Tactics
Personal Reflections on Values and Marketing Strategies
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Connect and get in touch with My Daily Business:
Welcome to episode 405 of the My Daily Business podcast. Today is a quick tip episode, and this is one that I could get stuck into, but I will try to contain myself to just 10 minutes or less because that's what is expected from these tip episodes. They are quick tips. Before we get stuck in, I want to acknowledge where I'm coming from and acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on this land that I record these podcasts, and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded. I also want to say thank you to everyone who sent so many messages of support when we hit 400 episodes, and also for that particular episode, the interview with the wonderful Phoebe Bell from Sage and Clare.
If you haven't listened to it, definitely want to get stuck into it after this episode. But just so much love and support and encouragement and many messages that were sent to us about hitting 400 episodes. We would not be able to do that without every single person who listens to this, who downloads it, who subscribes to this podcast. If you haven't subscribed, please hit subscribe. It helps us get found by other people in the whole algorithm and ranking of podcasts. But just wanted to say thank you. I can't believe we're at the episode 405. I just can't believe we're here. But just wanted to say thank you. Let's get into it.
One of the values that I have tried to always live my life by is kindness. It’s a huge value for our business. It has been a huge value that I grew up with. My parents were very kind people. I was incredibly lucky to have them. I mean definitely at their moments, I'm sure with four kids, they weren't always rainbows and unicorns, but in general, they were very kind people. My mom was a nurse, my dad was a teacher, and he later moved into other things. He also was a captain of a ship for a long time, and my dad always used to say, you have no idea what is going on behind closed doors for people. Be kind. And it's interesting, both of my parents have passed away and both my parents, as did I grow up without the internet or anything like that?
You just need to look at anything that is happening on social media or even the most popular terms for YouTube search. And much of it revolves around hate and hate speech and putting people down and being derogatory and being controversial and being negative. There's a lot of unkindness that is happening in online space. I also have two young children and one of them is coming up to a point where they're asking more questions about social media, they're asking questions about getting a phone and all of these things. It's something that I talk to a lot of my friends who are parents of teenagers about how they have navigated that because there is just so much negativity out there now. There is also some incredible stuff, and I have a little folder on my Instagram called my son's name because I save things all the time to show him. After all, there is so much incredible stuff online as well.
There are incredible ways to teach yourself anything. One of my sons is into Rubik's Cubes at the moment, and he has been learning a lot about them from this one particular YouTuber. I'm just saying, it's all negative. There is a lot of great stuff out there. But bringing it back to kindness, one of the things that I saw recently as a trend, and I mean this has been happening for years ever since the internet and particularly social media came about, but it seems to be gaining traction, particularly as a, not even trend, but as a tactic for small business owners. I just am bewildered by it. But I also just wanted to put it out there that you want to think about the energy that you're putting out into the world, and in particular for things like engagement on your social media as a small business owner.
What does this have to do with anything? Am I getting to a point? Yes. The tactic that I'm talking about today is rage baiting. You may not have heard of that term, or maybe you have, maybe you're familiar with it, but the concept, and it's being talked about a lot more in the last, I would say 24 months, particularly 12 months around utilizing rage baiting in your marketing strategy As a small business owner. To me, this is so against everything that I stand for. The idea is that you put something into your video or your post or blog that you are putting out purely to elicit rage from the people watching it or taking in or reading it so far that then they are compelled to discuss what has enraged them via a comment, which then leads to more comments and leads to in-row arguing basically on your post so that then you get higher engagement because the algorithm will see that there's a lot of people connecting with this post, even if it's negatively and they are commenting and getting angry at other people and then they're getting angry.
I just found the concept of rage baiting. To elicit in somebody else a negative response and potentially unkind response and potentially angered response purely to drive, I mean, I'm literally like laughing. You can hear it to drive your own social media engagement up. I mean, is it just me? I think there is so much wrong with that, so much wrong. When I come back to that value of kindness, I'm just like, how is that kind? Even if they are debating or squabbling over something relatively minor, you are still intentionally putting out into the world something purely to annoy somebody and get them enraged. I want to point out, this is different to just sparking a bit of debate. You have a lot of like this or that post, which I think are quite good for engagement. You have posts where you might say, this customer did this.
What do you think I should do? You're just getting conversation happening that is very different to rage-baiting. Rage baiting is going in with an incredibly controversial angle, not even just controversial, but in with something that is going to elicit anger in somebody, and then hoping that you potentially have enough loyalty in your audience that they will stand up for you, and that also you don't need to get involved. This is also a huge part of rage baiting that you as the rage beta, just put it out and then let the crowd fight and you don't get involved so that the algorithms are saying that it is not your account that is commenting because that can be seen in a negative light. But it is all of these other comments from other accounts. I just wanted to say today that if you are compelled to fall into these tactics like rage baiting, I mean the name alone should tell you to stay away from it, but come back to your values, come back to what are you trying to be known for?
Are you trying to be known for getting people to argue in your space because they're so passionate, they're this or that? It's not a debate, it's rage-baiting. It is enraging people. For me, doesn't align with my values. I don't care how much more engagement I might get on a post if people are enraged and I've ruined their day intentionally just to get a spike in engagement, probably temporarily in terms of helping my business somehow it doesn't align with one, what do my brand values are, two, what do I want to be known as? And three, longevity, which is what good marketing is. Good marketing builds brand loyalty. That is a long game. It is a long way of creating trust and communication and connection with your audience and whatever it is that you're putting out through your marketing.
Enraging people to me does not tick any of those things. But I'm interested to see how people utilize this. Again, I want to make the differentiation. It is not debate, it is not debate. I used to be like, I used to love debating. I was always doing the debating team in school, debating when I was in high school. I love that. I love a good debate. I'm somebody around the family table who is going to get into a strong debate about whether it's politics or my right to watch maths, I'm all good for debate. What I'm not good for is people using tactics and then selling and teaching these tactics that are just adding negativity and rage into the online world that I think has enough of that as it is. But also it's failing to remember that everyone that follows you, hopefully, unless you've gone and bought followers, in which case I can't stress enough that maybe you should rethink that.
But that everyone that follows you hopefully is a real person. That at the end of that account name that's getting angry in your post is somebody that is then potentially taking that anger into their real life, into their conversations with their family that day, their conversations with their children that day, the conversations with their elderly parents, the conversations with the bus driver, the train person and they're taking that negative energy that you have intentionally injected into the world through a rage baiting post into the community. If you double, triple, and multiply that entirely, what is it doing? What good is it doing? I know I might sound very naive and like, she's away with the fairies. Everyone's positive. I don't think everyone's positive. You just need to look at the world right now. There's a lot of negativity happening.
My thought is that you don't need to add to that. That is it for today. It's not a tip tool, a tactic, I guess it's a way of looking, I guess. This is the tip. The tip is to pull apart some of these trends that we're seeing more and more and more coming into marketing in particular, and aim them at marketing for small business owners to go lowest common denominator just to get a little bit more of a temporary spike in engagement. To me, that is not the way to go. I would urge you that if you are out there and you're like, my social media is just not doing anything I should take the advice and maybe throw some little grenades in there. No, please, just remember, we're all humans and we're all trying to do our best.
And marketing at its core is about connection and you don't build connections by enraging people. That is it for my little TED Talk and also for this episode of the podcast. I would love to know what you think of rage baiting if you've tried it or if you have been a victim of rage baiting and how it felt afterwards for you. You can always send us a DM @mydailybusiness_ on Instagram or @mydailybusiness on TikTok, or you can email us at hello@mydailybusiness.com. Thank you so much for reading. Please don't become rage baiters regardless of what you think it's going to do for your business because I assure you it's probably not going to be great in the long term. I'll see you next time.
