I had an exchange recently that has stuck with me and so I thought I would write a bit about this topic.
When someone tweets at me, emails me, texts me, tags me, etc, and I don’t reply, they assume I either did not see it or am ignoring it. That might be true but generally, it is not the case.
What is more likely is that I saw it, I got the message, I understand it, and I may even be acting on it. But for any number of good reasons, I have chosen not to reply to it.
There is a very big difference between ignoring something and acting on it, but that difference is not visible to the person sending the message. And so they assume that it is being ignored.
Sometimes I will like the message (if it is on social media) to acknowledge that I saw it. But if I don’t actually like the message (eg “you are the dumbest person in the world Fred”), I might not do that. Or I might. It sort of depends on my mood.
But the truth is I read a lot more and act on a lot more than I acknowledge publicly. And that is the case for many people I know who for various reasons (volume, legal, PR, etc) can’t or don’t reply to many messages.
So my point is don’t assume your messages are being ignored. They may be having the desired impact. But you may not know it.
