Devoted to online marketing, viral marketing, and web marketing

The recent tirade by the wife of millionaire Philip Smith, who is president of Shubert Organization; the largest owner of theaters on broadway, is a good case study in the pros and cons of Internet ranting.

Tricia Smith put up a video on Youtube, evidently to not only humiliate her husband, but his family as well. She actually goes through her wedding album online identifying different members of his family as "bad" or "evil" or "nasty."

What it's all about is her husband is divorcing her and she's whining about the prenuptial agreement which allows her nothing until his death. At that time she'll get $500,000 a year for the rest of her life. With her husband being about 25 years older than her, she doesn't want to wait for her "pension."

That's why she put up the video, in order to persuade her husband to pay her, so she'll quietly go away. Of course she doesn't say that, but that's what it's all about. If she humiliates the family enough, she thinks they'll pressure him to pay her to make her go away. Poor little rich girl, she might have to go out and work like the rest of us.

As far as how this relates to Internet marketing, we have to understand the difference between something like this and genuine frustration by customers.

Tricia Walsh Smith Tirade

I've seen a lot of well-meaning online bloggers talk about the need to answer rants. While that is true to a certain degree, it isn't true in many cases. For example, I've seen people put together online video rants about an experience they had with a company. In many cases, not only did it not work, but viewers saw through the con, and slammed the ranter, seeing they were obviously trying to get something free from the company. These types of cons do this every day toward businesses.

The point is we do need to listen to legitimate rants and complaints from our customers. The trick is to know the difference between the two.

There are actually organized groups of people that slam businesses with emails and and rants in order to influence them to do what they want them to do. Many times they aren't even customers or users of the products or services.

This is of course done by activists more than anything else, in an attempt to make it look like there's a large outcry against a company, when in reality it's not really an issue among their customers.

We do need to reply to some of these as they are attempting to use "social proof" in a negative way against you. By social proof I mean they're attempting to make it look like everybody agrees with it and are outraged. This is a growing tactic used by people with too much time on their hands, yet can be effective if not responded to.

Why it's important to understand this is we have to know which things to respond to and which things to just let go. If we are so thin-skinned that we rush to answer every negative thing mentioned about us, we'll have to have an army of responders to take care of the issues.

In the end, people are usually smart enough to see through the hoaxes put out there by people with agendas. Even so, new Internet tools offer them ways to do it in swarms that make it look like a real outcry against a person or a company. It can also be done quickly and catch on rapidly.

The best way to respond is to first of all see if it has any long-term legs to it. If it simply won't go away, and spreads beyond the core group trying to cause the problems, we need to respond in a public way and through similar means our detractors use.

Of course we must also take into account that there are times when people are legitimately frustrated with the company and poor products and services. That's where the Internet is so powerful for both sides of an issue.

The bottom line is we need to discern the difference between being slammed by agitators and activists, and real customer frustrations and complaints that need to be addressed.

This video is a good example of how a person ranting is doing themselves more harm than good, and the husband, in this case, looking more like the victim and being victimized by a golddigger wife. She has already lost in the court of public opinion, and no prenuptial agreement has been ruled against in the courts.

Like the husband, in cases like this it's better to let things take their course and be quiet. This woman is going to marginalize herself and make the video irrelevant, as far as the purpose she made it for. We can't make ourselves look like bullies, even if someone is obviously attempting to wrongly demean us.

People are quick to understand when it's real and when it's fake. In these cases it's best to let it quietly lose its impetus. In a day or two nobody will remember this lady or her name, and will be on with the next "scandal" of the day. Time is on our side, and we just need to hold out until the rumors fade away. They do that quickly when it's not a true problem.