Golden State PR guy anonymously defends franchise on message board

she said the seminar teacher instructions were that since most newspaper and message boards don't moderate the blogs, that wading in anonymously was the only way to protect your organization's brand.
so, in that line of thinking, I can understand why and if I was doing professional PR work, I'd have a couple of handles, one anonymous and one with my name to do the exact same thing.
The Interwebs are a new world, the old rules don't apply like they used to.

 

This happens a lot.

 

I hope, in the seminars, they talk about what happens if you're found out to be a company shill. The backlash can be worse than if you never posted at all.

 

How often do you think people get caught?

 

Some people post anonymously when they ought to be attaching their names, but they don't because they're trying to tilt the discussion without their bought-and-paid-for agendas being known. Some people post anonymously because they don't have lives to speak of and devote more time to that sort of stuff than your average civilian.

I still think readers are like listeners of talk radio -- most of them will never post a comment or call into the station. If you focus too much only on those who do, you're missing the big picture.

I'd fret more about a PR hack influencing a message board if I put real weight on individual messages in the first place. As an overall indicator of sentiment or passions or viewpoint, I find them informative. But sweating whether one or two or a dozen have an ax to grind, nope, can't go there.