Posted by Nate Warren
Bringing clients into conversational media can be a nerve-trying affair. The coolest thing about it is the worst thing about it: people can talk, open and unmediated, about your company. Sometimes the best way to manage the flame of open debate is to throw your log on the fire and just let it burn.
Our client, Richard Schuh, has operated his college textbook buying business more or less under the radar for nearly 20 years. When he decided to package his hard-won knowledge as a business-in-a-box for other entrepreneurs, staying out of the light was no longer an option. He was moving from word-of-mouth niche businessman to pitchman, and we began our foray into the public eye — which also included a blog, Twitter and LinkedIn debut — with a bid for a little local coverage. The online biz-op space is an overpopulated shark tank, and we figured that having some local mainstream coverage to point to would help separate us a little from all the “Make CEO Income From Home!!!” guys. We were fortunate to be featured by reporter Steven Wilke and photographer Mara Auster in a Daily Camera business profile.
Richard was a bit leery about what might show up in the comment field. Imagine the anxiety of feeling like 20 years of your work could be dismissed or smeared by an anonymously submitted post. The first comment didn’t help. Somebody named “Kehoe” kicked things off by claiming Richard’s business was illegal and comparing him to a meth dealer. Wow. While our first reflex was to figure out how to counter (or whether to ignore) this destructive and inaccurate comment, we decided on another course of action: we did nothing. We watched.
A fantastic thing happened. Two rebuttals to the “meth lab” guy appeared, followed by a second critic (who has since deleted his comments). Throughout the day, we saw that a parent, a student and a professor — who each had their own takes on the textbook industry — had showed up to dogpile on our detractors. We capped it with a “thank you” to all for the discussion, and politely addressed some of the more inflammatory claims — now backed by a third-party chorus that cushioned us from having to play a tit-for-tat rebuttal game on the detractors’ terms.
Granted, it wasn’t a breaking TechCrunch post with eight figures of VC money on the line, but this was Richard’s life and business, and it was just as important to us that day. Entering the crossfire of the comment field, it really helped us to be light on the stick. If your strategy depends on countering every twist and turn of the discussion you start online, you’re in for a long day. Remember, it’s not just your story to tell anymore, and that can be a good thing.
2 responses so far ↓
1 Alexis Anzalone // Jun 10, 2009 at 3:24 am
Very interesting, and such a tough call to make.
I've been on the end of finding out that a client is pretending to be a different person in order to post "positive" comments on their own story; and just recently I was staffing an interview with the WSJ in which the reporter was pretty upset with the comments on his own story – because he could tell PR people had gotten involved.
I agree with your approach to wait – patience is a virture in most cases like this.
2 nate // Jun 12, 2009 at 11:45 am
Alexis:
Thanks for the response. I can see how your reporter would be peeved. The temptation to “stuff the ballot box” has to be a big one; relationships with your valued media contacts are — as you illustrated — one of the best reasons for total transparency when jumping into a thread.
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