Running an online community means occasionally having to deal with the anti-social antics of trolls. Underscore Marketing's president lays out a plan for keeping the peace.

Community building is a strategic cornerstone for many digital marketing plans. It all sounds so great on paper -- people connecting with one another and sharing their affinity for your brand. Rarely, though, do strategic plans discuss what to do when some jerk signs up for an account and starts deliberately ruining the experience for everyone else.

Trolls drive community moderators crazy. They're the anti-social outliers who deliberately post inflammatory or irrelevant material in order to get a rise out of others. The name comes less from the bridge-dwelling tormentors of the Billy Goats Gruff, and more from the fishing method, which involves towing a lure behind a boat in order to snare passing fish. (Get it?)

That's what trolls do. And if you're going to keep them from derailing your community initiatives, you need to understand their motivation. They seek attention and the satisfaction of knowing that their actions ruined the community experience for someone else. If you don't understand this, you stand to make the problem much worse when you try to get a handle on it.

How do I know who the trolls are?
Trolls tend to come in a number of different varieties, but the flagrant ones are really easy to spot. They're the ones who sign up for your community, instantly start contributing tin foil hat conspiracy theories, posts riddled with foul language and name-calling, or graphic photos. They expect to be banned, and they want to do as much damage as possible before a community moderator notices what they're doing and gets rid of them.

Unfortunately, there's a variety of troll that's a bit more intelligent. A really good internet troll rides the line of acceptable behavior, occasionally stepping over the line, but not severely or often enough to set off alarm bells with community moderators. This kind of troll sticks around for a while and is capable of fast-talking or debating the rules in such a way as to convince moderators to give them second and third chances.

Determining who the trolls are requires an objective look at contribution history. If you're running a message board, take a look at posting history, both short- and long-term. Did the suspected troll's posts contribute anything useful? Or were they primarily geared toward provoking negative reactions? The reason why you need to look at this over a period of time is that you want to be able to distinguish between a real troll and someone who might have had a bad day, or who is going through a rough patch personally.

It's often difficult to objectively judge someone's community contributions in this way. If there are doubts, try to get a second pair of eyes to look things over.

OK, now what?
Suspensions and outright bannings are the way that most moderators effectively deal with trolls. These are effective deterrents, but only if executed properly. Frankly, this is where most moderators screw up.

Trolls crave controversy and attention. That's why the wisest piece of advice you see floating around community sites is "Do Not Feed The Trolls," often abbreviated DNFTT. When you lower the banhammer or issue a suspension, it's important to do it with as little fanfare as humanly possible. In many ways, internet trolls are like little Freddy Kruegers -- the more you pay attention to them, the stronger they get.

This is why I said it was critical to understand a troll's motivation. He's actually looking for a spectacular flameout, which a public banning or suspension conveniently provides. If you can make trolls quietly disappear without announcing it to the community at large, do it. Resist that urge to get a last dig in before the troll departs. It just makes him stronger.

One other important thing to remember is that trolls often develop a martyr complex when they're banned or suspended. If they have other channels through which to reach community members (such as private email), they often will, trying to persuade your community members to take their side against the community moderators. There's little you can do to combat this, but be aware that it's going on.

Many trolls also develop God complexes after being banned or suspended. They'll often try to come back and open up another account to circumvent the rules. If this happens, it's important that you not simply let it go. Some trolls are smart enough to clear their cookies and cycle their dynamically assigned IP address before they sign up again, to avoid detection of their identity switch. Most aren't. So if your community management system allows for banning by IP address or by cookie identifier, make sure you keep your ban lists up to date.

If the troll comes back on another IP -- and many times they will identify themselves as the banned member (sometimes with a comment like "The moderators can't ban me!") -- you can re-ban them. Take a page from SuperNanny's playbook: If you keep banning them without fanfare, they'll eventually lose interest and move on.

What if it's an organized effort?
Believe it or not, some people enjoy trolling so much that they're part of communities centered on the practice. Many a Wired article has been written about organized community raids. The first one I can remember was when the Usenet newsgroup alt.tasteless raided rec.pets.cats with a prolonged and organized trolling effort. That was before widespread commercial adoption of the web, but the practice of organized raids still continues. Organized groups of trolls and griefers ruin the community experience for everyone and then document it in great detail. [Warning: Link has non-work-safe language and imagery.]

If you look around and notice the troll population suddenly and rapidly expanding, do your best to find out if it's an organized raid. Use a brand monitoring service or targeted searches on blog and community search engines to pick up on any chatter centered on organizing a raid on your community.

Have a backup plan. Most community management systems allow for temporarily requiring moderator approval of all new accounts. While moving to a moderator approval system can severely limit community growth while in place, it might be the better option when confronted by dozens or hundreds of little web terrorists bent on taking your community down.

Dealing with trolls is one of the prices we have to pay for getting into the community space to begin with. It comes with the territory. If handled in the right way, though, trolls won't get a foothold in your community, and they'll go pick on someone else.

Tom Hespos is the president of Underscore Marketing and blogs at Hespos.com.