If you have an online presence, it’s very likely that you have encountered a Troll at some point. A Troll is someone who writes negative things about you or your brand. Be careful not to confuse this with an unsatisfied customer, which is a different case and has to be taken care of in another way!
The most common Trolls that can be really harmful to your brand are usually fake profiles, created by an actual person with a different name. Usually, this person may have numerous fake profiles which use for their purposes. They could even have been deployed by your brand’s rivals, regardless that this practice is unethical and illegal.
There are many different approaches to dealing with Trolls. Some advice that you should ignore them. However, if you believe that they are actively harming your brand’s equity, we believe you should take more active measures. What we suggest is first to scrutinize their profile and online activity to make sure they are not actual persons or just unsatisfied customers. You could send them a carefully written private message asking them what exactly is the problem and how you could help resolve this.
If however, you are sure that the profiles are fake, then every social media service has a report button. So you could report their illegal activity from a fake profile to the host service (e.g. Facebook) and this could result in deactivating this account. For this to work, it is recommended to have more people from your company reporting them, as it will drive more attention from the ones responsible to take action.
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