It’s been an interesting couple of days in the social media scene as things got a bit messy with NAB’s ubank allegedly faking user generated content through myfuturebank.org blog (now taken down).

I won’t go into too much detail on what happened (Google is your friend!) but whilst all the social media experts were bagging NAB’s conduct it was also interesting to read a different side to the story by Charis Palmer here. She makes an interesting point in saying that we are all too quick to judge without really considering a few fundamental things that are the basis of social media marketing these days.

The key learning that comes out of a case like this is the need for education within organisations, providing people with a set of rules for transparency when talking about or on behalf of their companies. No one can blame an employee for trying to promote (or defend) the company they work for being transparent is fundamental to maintaining your credibility.

Ultimately no one likes to be taken for a fool and once you cross that line you either:

a) Assume you stuffed up, apologise and quickly rectify things – here’s the perfect example with Bigpond on twitter

b) Pretend nothing’s happened (i.e. take the website down) and live with the consequences knowing that it will take a lot of time and hard work to regain your credibility back.

By the way thanks to Julian Cole for pointing that one out during the AFA Digital Strategy lecture on Social Media. Nothing like seeing things unfold as we learn…