GASP! The ever-feared feedback! The cantankerous critics! The crabby commentary! The dizzy of disapproving dialogue!

Criticism is damn-near impossible to avoid, especially if you have an online presence or business. We all know by now how much people love to hide behind the internet’s virtual shields. Considering the often-negative climate of today’s cyberscape, we think it’s a good idea to refresh how to handle criticism—whether it’s constructive feedback hiding in a poor delivery or just plain mean.

For today’s Listen, Amy Porterfield is sharing a handful helpful reminders and lessons that she’s learned from her own experiences.

Criticisms can be cold—keep a cool head about ‘em. Jump to 05:15 to get started.

• (05:15) What to do when “trolls” are in your audience, are your clients or your students
• (06:00) First approach to criticism
• (06:15) How Amy tried to make up for a “mistake” with a disgruntled fan and how it went very, very wrong
• (09:00) What Amy learned from her experience and how she should have handled the criticism
• (09:20) What it means to actually handle something with “grace and elegance”
• (10:45) How to and why you should stand in confidence of the decision you’re making and be ready for criticism and negative responses
• (12:00) Criticism tip #2
• (12:15) How two of Amy’s students handled a flood of negative comments…
• (15:15) Third approach to criticism
• (15:30) How Amy handles really harsh and rude feedback even when it’s true and valuable
• (15:15) Why criticism can be really helpful, depending on the delivery
• (16:45) What Amy learned after that horrible experience dealing with criticism (and what she does now)
• (17:45) How do you deliver criticism?

Who doesn’t love a good research report? Give us all the facts, all the figures, and all the numbers. Data overload just doesn’t exist in our book. Okay, that’s not true at all. You can truly get to a point where you have too much data.

But, today’s Read has just the right amount of data. Buffer pulled together all the best data they could find about social media in 2018 and packed it into one seriously dense report.

This thing is hefty, but we’ve got the key points right here, as always:

• There are huge opportunities in the messaging space. Only 20% of marketers have invested time or money in marketing through Facebook Messenger and similar platforms. That presents a big opportunity for you because that means these platforms aren’t overrun with bad marketing from bad brands.
• Companies who invest in social media ads see much greater value in social media than those who don’t. If your company isn’t fully bought into social media, maybe you should start with ads, instead of starting only with organic posting.
• Engagement is the #1 way to measure ROI from social media advertising. Companies are realizing that social media is better at helping to build your brand than directly making sales.
• Facebook is still the most-used platform for marketers. Followed by Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and YouTube. Wanna guess the percentage of marketers using Snapchat? It’s just 11%.
• Video is a top priority for 85% of marketers. That’s not surprising at all, but that means Facebook might soon be overrun with video.
• 94% of marketers have used Facebook ads. On the flip side, only 26% have used LinkedIn and only 10% have used YouTube. Sounds like there’s less competition on those platforms if you’re looking for something new.
• Only 31% of Marketers have used live video. That presents a massive opportunity, especially with Facebook saying that live video is going to be important in their new News Feed.

There are still about a bajillion other stats we couldn’t pack in here.

Just when we thought we were done with the “Best of 2017” lists, another one came along that was too good to turn away.

Research firm, System1, took the time to rank the 10 most emotionally engaging ads of 2017. We’re not exactly sure how they rank ads on an emotional scale, but we’ve gotta hand it to them, all 10 of these spots are amazing. We’d never even seen most of these, and we spend all day watching ads (please don’t tell our boss).

The number one spot, according to System1, goes to an ad from biscuit brand belVita (delicious, btw). It’s an ad that features an all-too-common situation—Monday morning commute on public transportation.

If we were in charge of ranking these ads, we’d rate the second-place ad as the best. It’s an ad for YKK Zippers, which at first we were all like, “An ad for a zipper? Nah.” But then we watched it and were like, “Dang, where can we buy some frickin’ zippers?!”

It’s Friday. You can procrastinate a little bit and watch all 10 right now. We won’t tell.