18 year old social media personality Ryley Isaac, is no stranger to nasty comments online. Her bubbly personality and talent for makeup has enabled the starlet to grow to over 750,000 followers on TikTok (@ryley) and over 650,000 on Instagram @ryleyisaac. She is an all round entertainer however her rise to online popularity has not been without negative comments. Talking to Ryley she speaks on her personal experience with negative comments and spreads some tips for budding social media creators online.
As a content creator, what has helped you deal with negative comments online?
Ryley: "Firstly, you have to be as strong minded as possible, don't let the comments get to you no matter how bad they are, block it out! What has helped me in the past, are the comment moderation tools on each platform, they are there for a reason and allow you to set certain phrases that will then be blocked, it's a nice way to automatically block out negative energy, definitely make use of these! This is also a good way to stop people commenting and exposing personal information like a phone number or home address. The big one really is the realisation to not care about judgment & people's opinions on you, remember you're creating content for you and your audience, not to impress or prove anything to anyone else, just do you and you will go far!"
As an established creator now, do you have a process where you relax and unwind?
Ryley: "I do, I love to spend quality time with my family & boyfriend. We love to all sit down and have a movie night together, it allows me to unwind. Spending time with them in general helps me come back into normality and chill out after a long day of filming and being online."
What advice would you give to someone creating content online that is receiving negative comments?
Ryley: "Take a look over that piece of content and really do a deep check to see if there is anything wrong with it. Could it be offensive, inappropriate or at least seen to be like that? If you can see an issue with the content, maybe you had missed it I'd advise to remove it and then address any issues. If however your content is perfectly fine, and there is no clear backlash, 9 times out of 10 the negative comments are all jealous people trying to bring you down, at least that is what I have found in my personal experience. You carry on doing you, if you are finding yourself being hurt by the comments I would look to delete them or set up a comment filter like what we last spoke about, they really do help! When I was first starting out on social media people were not so sure what I was all about, they didn't know me or my story, so I received many horrible comments relating to my port wine birthmark, comments such as "who punched you", "it's fake, it's actually makeup", "she's doing it for attention" - that last one shocked me the most to be honest. Although comments like this got me down I know my truth so I powered through and got to where I am now, I am now in the position to inspire others and help normalise birthmarks like mine and help others going through things like that."
If you could give 3 tips for future content creators what would those be?
"Tip 1: Stay motivated! Even on days where you're feeling tired or low, power on!"
"Tip 2: The more effort you put into your content, the better results & engagement will be later on, trust me on that, good content always will win at the end of the day."
"Tip 3: Lastly, as a creator make sure you're in a position to devote most of your time to creating and entertaining, some sacrifices will have to be made, for example going out with friends or partying when you are young you purely need to work on yourself and grind in the industry and it will pay off, in the world of online whilst it may all look polished behind the scenes all of the top creators have sacrificed something to get there, everyone is different and these sacrifices and decisions come in so many different forms, put simply if something is hindering you to do better, change it."
