Intro: Get ready for your daily dose of marketing strategies and tactics from entrepreneurs with the guile and experience to help you find success in any marketing capacity. You're listening to Marketing School with your instructors, Neil Patel and Eric Siu.

Eric Siu: Welcome to another episode of Marketing School. I'm Eric Siu ...

Neil Patel: And I'm Neil Patel ...

Eric Siu: And today we're going to talk about hater's gonna hate: how to deal with negativity on social media. So, you know that's interesting, Neil? I was looking at some of the comments on my channel, and you know how we post some of these videos sometimes?

Neil Patel: Yeah.

Eric Siu: Somebody left a comment, and I should send this to you. I laughed when I saw it. This one guy was like, "Neil is the SEO God. Eric, you should stop trying to be like him. The student should just learn from the master." I was like, "Wow."

Neil Patel: Yeah. One thing to note for all of you is, I don't think I'm the SEO God, I don't think I know everything. I learn from a lot of people and that's how I got good at SEO. Even Eric, who started after me, he has taught me things as well as tons of other marketers out there who are like 20 years old. They come up with these crazy tactics because they're using Snapchat and all these new social media platforms and devices. They're teaching me new stuff. I don't believe I know everything, and I believe I can continually get better.
The moment you feel you're a God, and this is a whole different topic and I'll stop here, but the moment you think you're a God and are the best at anything, that's when you're going to start falling 'cause someone else is just going to knock your socks off.

Eric Siu: 100%. So, going back ... I mean, my initial reaction was ... We actually got a negative Glassdoor review too. It actually wasn't that bad, but I look at these things and I'm like, "Yes." It feels like you're making progress when you have haters, and I just kind of move onto the next thing. This topic kind of manifested or came about because I was looking through LinkedIn, and I saw Neil post up a video recently about how he managed to get some haters and then how he deals with it. Maybe we should talk about the campaign first, Neil.

Neil Patel: Yeah. So, I did a campaign once where I paid guys and girls, a lot of them were models, to say who is Neil Patel. It was just a brand awareness campaign. Some of the girls didn't wear enough clothes. Some of the guys definitely didn't wear enough clothes. It was both the guys and the girls, I'm not trying to be sexist.
A lot of people pointed out what I did with the females, no one cared about what I did with the guys, and they were just like, "Look at this. You're degrading women," yada yada yada. I apologize, and ... You know, it was funny. I'm not saying I was right or wrong. I had women tell me they hate me, I had men tell me they hate me. I had men tell me people need to grow thick skins. I had women tell me that, "Hey, I don't see what you're doing is sexist. I see nothing wrong with it." So, it's like you're never going to please everyone.

Eric Siu: Yeah. So, I think ... I mean, let's look at Neil's audience. Both blogs get over a million visits a month. This podcast, we're approaching 700,000 downloads a month. So-

Neil Patel: I saw your message on social media. It was somewhere ... was it [crosstalk 00:02:58]?

Eric Siu: 681 on Instagram.

Neil Patel: Yeah, you were so happy. Put the smiley and everything.

Eric Siu: Yeah. And this little swipe up, too. But, my point is, once you start to get to a certain volume, I mean, to Neil's point, and the Mark Cuban quote, if you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one. You're going to rub some people the wrong way, but for the most part, even when Neil put that video up, overwhelmingly positive comments. People were just like, "I don't know how people hate you. Neil, you put up so much stuff."
Even the stuff that we're putting out right now, we just keep going, going, going. Yes, there's going to be haters, but for the most part, let's say it only helps 80% of the people that listen to it, we're still, net, net, we're still helping people.

Neil Patel: Yeah. In general, if you don't have any haters, you're doing something wrong. Here's what I mean about this, and Eric touched on this a little bit at the beginning. If you don't have any haters, it means you're not pushing the boundaries. I'm not saying break the rules or do things that are unethical, I'm just saying you're not pushing the boundaries.
For example, I recently announced that I'm going after my competition, or I'm going after new people in the software space, Ahrefs, SEMrush, keywordtool.io, KWFinder, and I don't give a shit what any of them think. I think they're all awesome people, they're all awesome tools, all awesome products, and I'm just like, "I'm just going to create it and release it for free." Some of them laughed at me, some of them think I'm stupid, some of them said that's a scummy tactic, and then on the flip side, I had literally thousands and thousands of emails of people saying, "Awesome. Thank you very much. I can't afford these tools."
I'm not trying to [demonitize 00:04:27] anything, I'm just like, "Look, if these companies make a max of 50 to 100 million, and Google who makes over 80 billion from ads a year, or something crazy like that," I'm like, "Something's wrong with their business model." I'm just going to release it all for free, collect leads and try to make money that way. Whether people hate or don't hate, at least I'm doing something that's pushing the limits, so much so that it's getting people within the industry to talk about it.

Eric Siu: Yeah. I mean, I think the main thing is this. Look, when you start to reach a certain level of success, you are going to have haters. All you need to do is, for the most part, ignore them, or if you're looking to make more content from it, like we're doing right now, or how Neil's done with the video, go ahead and do that, but you've got to just focus on what your end goal is, what your vision is for the longterm. Forget about the haters. Keep doing what you're doing. Keep learning. What else do we have, Neil?

Neil Patel: I think that's really it. Don't worry about it. When it comes to haters, the best thing you can do is not respond. I have a friend, Tim Sykes, he loves responding, and it fuels him. In general, it just causes more hate. You're better off ignoring it. If you did something wrong, by all means you should apologize, or you did something that's maybe pushing it too much and people hate you, apologize, but once you say your piece, that's it. You don't need to keep replying.
Usually, you're better off ignoring it, because the moment you respond, people are like, "Oh, I got him,' and then it's just like they're right after you and it's just pretty much a witch hunt.

Eric Siu: Yeah. Usually, the thing with haters is, it's not anything against you per se, for the most part. It's usually something that they have internal. The fact that they have time to do that online means, look, there's something ... I mean, even in real life too, when you have haters, it's something that they have going on internally, right? Never think it's really about you. It's always about the other person. So, like Neil said, let's not bother responding to people. Just move on and go on with your day.
So, with that being said, go to singlegrain.com/giveaway to check out our marketing goodies to grow your business, and we'll see you tomorrow.

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