I’ve been keeping up with Cash4Gold on Twitter for the past week, and noticed I hadn’t received any tweets from them lately. I wasn’t particularly sad, as most of their tweets were self-serving propaganda and pro-gold drivel. I was, however, curious. I checked out their Twitter page and was greeted by this message:
Interesting. I have to admit that I am curious as to what they could have done to warrant being investigated by Twitter. Was it the constant stream of propaganda? Did they try to add too many people at once? Were they harassing other Twitter users that dared mention their name? My guess would be the latter, given the way their PR firm’s lawyer so boldly threatened fivemilliondots.com with a defamation lawsuit. As I previously mentioned, their whole PR strategy seems rather inept and inadequate to say the least.
Nothing hurts PR worse than sending a threatening letter to a blogger. Oh, except for offering a blogger cash to kill a story critical of your company. The value of a cash settlement pales into comparison to the value of sensationalism generated by a blogger being threatened with a lawsuit or tempted with a bribe.
Mack Collier (Marketing Profs) has four steps for handling negative feedback in the blog-o-sphere that would have greatly benefited Cash4Gold, and maybe even saved or at least moderated their online reputation:
1 - If someone is leaving negative comments about your company, respond.2 - Be thankful and polite. Nothing escalates a negative comment into a full-bore flamewar faster than an 'Oh yeah?!?' reply from the company.
3 - If commenters are jumping to the wrong conclusion about your company, kindly correct them with the proper information.
4 - Thank them for their feedback, and encourage them to provide more. Leave your email address so they can contact you off the blog, if they choose.
If you are thankful and respectful toward commenters, even those that are attacking your company, the end result will almost always be a positive experience.
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