Comments on: Fighting Axe Grinders and Their Online Vendettas

By: Look who’s talking about YOU! « EverythingCU.com World 2.0 Adventure

Look who’s talking about YOU! « EverythingCU.com World 2.0 Adventure — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 13:44:44 +0000

[...] WILLIAM AZAROFF, Monitoring your brand health WILLIAM AZAROFF, Responding to bloggers DREW McLELLAN, 6 Steps to take if your company is criticized in a blog post JOHN SOAT, Reputations at risk MORRISS PARTEE, Motrin gives itself a migraine CHRIS LOCKE et al, The Cluetrain Manifesto RYAN UNDERWOOD, Tell us what you really think LESLEY LAMBERT, BofA is on Twitter for the win STEFAN BETZOLD, SM Monitoring Tools-an overview DAN SCHAWBEL, Top 10 reputation tracking tools DARREN BAREFOOT, I wanted to love Vancity, but now I loathe them CULLEN WATERS, Vystar CU – Worst bank ever JEFFRY PILCHER, Fighting axe grinders and their online vendettas [...]

By: Editor

Editor — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:14:54 +0000

FYI – “John” and “Darren,” you “both” posted your comment from the same IP address. A one man “army” hiding behind anonymity? For the purposes of this discussion, we’ll assume you are associated with the attack on Priority One Credit Union, and are (in all likelihood) the primary blogger.

VENDETTA – a prolonged, bitter quarrel with- or campaign against someone.

EXPOSE’ – a report about the facts of something, esp. a journalistic report that reveals something scandalous or shocking.

The use of the term “vendetta” in the story is correct, as the term “exposé” would suggests that all angry bloggers are right and all financial institutions are wrong.

In many of these situations, it’s a matter of perspective and opinion, not something undeniably immoral, illegal or wrong.

By: "John" (aka "Darren")

"John" (aka "Darren") — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:29:31 +0000

You confuse vendetta with expose’.

By: "Darren" (aka "John")

"Darren" (aka "John") — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 06:28:33 +0000

A company who is allegedly attacked unfairly and without evidence should find it easy to counter all such allegations using evidence. Unfortunately, in the case of Priority One Credit Union there is tangilble evidence which has and will probably dissipate any effort by the credit union to try and justify actually committed wrong doing. This article is helpful but there are two sides to every coin and what appears to be a merciless attack by one reader might be deemed a justified expose by another.

By: Denise Wymore

Denise Wymore — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 19:21:25 +0000

Great post – I’ve had marketers ask these questions. I tell them to stop pissing people off if they don’t have to.

I know, not great advice but if you think about it – the best thing that can happen is to have LOYAL happy members be the norm so the occasional blog-happy-un-happy-member is lambasted by their fellow members. Then you don’t have to intervene at all.

After all – it’s their financial cooperative.

By: Robbie Wright

Robbie Wright — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 18:31:04 +0000

You’re 100% right Jeffry, there is no way that a CU or bank can squat on all of the possible variants, so they should prepare an “offensive defense”, which in this example, Navy FCU is seems to be missing. That offensive defense can take the form of taking the person out to coffee or having legal counsel send them a nasty-gram. Either way, taking quick and decisive action is key and the nature of the response should be gauged by both the nature of the attack (one off-handed twitter comment vs an entire blog) and the culture of the FI.

By: Christopher Morris

Christopher Morris — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 16:53:29 +0000

I echo William – this should be required reading (…I also give out the link to William’s presentation embedded here in my social media presentations).

By: William Azaroff

William Azaroff — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 14:38:28 +0000

Hey there Jeffry. Great post, thanks for this!