Someone’s attacked you online; should you respond?

The US Air Force may not seem the obvious place to go for advice on this, but they do take online communication seriously and are an organisation whose activities, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan, are frequently talked about online.

Being also rather a large bureaucracy, they’ve created a flowchart to help decide how to respond to online comments. Some parts are, er…, very American management speak (“proactively share your story”) but there’s also a lot of good sense in it, particularly in its five headings about responding to blog postings:

Transparency (make clear who you are)
Sourcing (give sources for your claims)
Timeliness (respond quickly)
Tone (the tone you use reflects on yourself and your organisation)
Influence (put your efforts into the sites that matter most)

Anyway, here is the updated flowchart for your enlightenment.

Hat-tip: David Meerman Scott.