Plenty of marketers like to blow off steam after a particularly long day or long week.  Talking to your spouse or friends is one thing – going on a public forum and “venting” is another. 

You see, anything you write on forums pretty much lasts “forever” online.  Your customers may search for your name in Google one day, and they’ll run across the posts you’ve made in forums.

Look around at the popular marketing forums and you’ll see plenty of marketers ridiculing their customers, calling them “idiots,” etc.   Now imagine you were a potential customer, and the person you wanted to buy from was calling his customers “idiots.”  That would likely leave a bad impression and bad taste in your mouth, wouldn’t it?

And the same goes for your customers.  If you’ve vented about the “stupid” customers you have and the “hilarious” emails they send you, chances are a potential customer is going to find that post some day …and she’s not going to find it that funny. 

She might even have a question for you, but after seeing you ridicule other customers publicly, she decides not to contact you at all for fear of being called “stupid.”  She’s going to seek out your competitor instead – the one who keeps mum about his interactions with his customers.