Ok, let's have this conversation now. Faking reviews for your company, product, or service online is BAD. REALLY BAD. You will get caught – if not online, by customers.
If you are starting out and have no reputation online (in the form of reviews or testimonials) work on getting some. There is no shortcut here. Earn them. How?
1) Be a great business. That's the first step.
2) You can reach out to your best or favorite customers and ask for reviews and even go as far as giving a link to where you would like the reviews to appear (Google Local, Yelp, etc.) Paying for or artificially creating reviews is pretty easy to spot. Brand new company with 15 top-star reviews all sounding too much the same? Chances are you hit Fiverr.com (no, just because I brought it up does not mean I endorse it!)
3) Review your vendors honestly and ask for a referral or recommendation for your own business online. Remember that LinkedIn is a great place as well to pick up some credibility.
Now, if you have a bad reputation online you have a few things to do to get your rep straight.
1) Fix your internal / processes and stop sucking (yes, I really said that). No amount of positive buzz online will fix you if your company, products, services, or employee's attitude is in the dumps. A good deal of times I'm hired on to work a social / digital strategy with a company I wind up working on fixing internal business and customer support processes first. If you honestly want to improve, you need to take one on the chin and listen to someone outside your company / industry to find the weak points. It hurts like ripping off a bandaid, but it will get better soon enough.
2) Answer reviews and criticism online honestly and without judgement or accusations. Please do not accuse customers online or point fingers. I've seen too many 'answers' to negative critiques online by companies recruiting employees to respond anonymously and trash talk the customer. Don't. Just don't. Own up to your mistakes and errors, say you are sorry, ask to move it offline, and get on with your business.
3) Old and out of date reviews can be buried legitimately with positive (and honest) reviews. Again, you need to earn them, but can absolutely reach out to star clients and ask for reviews.
4) Be patient. It doesn't take long to trash your online reputation but it does take awhile to fix it. My general rule of thumb is that if you have been ignoring your online reputation for X amount of months or years, it will take 1.5x that to get a grip on it again. I know the Internet seems like a magical place you can hit 'publish' and be on your way, but course-correcting a long term problem takes just that – long term.
To wrap up, if you think that you are in a business or industry that doesn't really need to rely or concern themselves with online reviews or reputations – you are wrong. Oh. So. Wrong. Granted, I'm sure there are some industries that don't care about getting a bad rap – offline or online – but I have yet to find one. Do you have any examples? I'd love to know!
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SEO Company Spews Fake Reviews On Google+ Local
An SEO company should know better to mess with other SEOs, shouldn’t they? Well, they don’t always think before they act. Scott Hendison uncovered a SEO company that is faking their location in Googl…
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+Lynette Young : amen to that.
The company I work for doesn't need reviews. We are set up as a conduit for research and projects between companies that own a very specific piece of equipment.
Finally – someone who says it as it is. Thank you!
+Shar Banning thanks for bringing that up. A good deal of B2B companies don't rely so heavily on public reviews – I'd have to agree. The 'trash talk' there goes on a lot behind the doors with other vendors or lateral industries.
Hey +Yifat Cohen & +Denis Labelle you two are straight-talkers too!
I tip my hat off to those who deal with the negative reviews and trying to win the customers back. Not a lot of them on the local page scene but you know who's trying to do great customer service.
I've never been a fan of the "fake it 'til you make it" concept in any arena. How is not being authentic ever okay? Nice post, +Lynette Young
OK, let's have this conversation, cuz I know a bit more about this than anyone else since it has been a big IM product for almost 2 years now. Won't name names this time, but here goes.
I have been an advocate of the client owning the G+ account for over 4 years now. The bad news for consultants is that when a relationship with a client is lost, so is all their hard work that may have gone way beyond what they were paid.
So a number of big Internet marketers came up with a system, where you create the account, usually a fake business name and suite address. Then you use a call service to take the calls.
Then you go on to create a domain for the fake business and a WP blog. What do you do with all this? You SELL the traffic, lead optins and phone calls to a real business.
I personally know a guy who made $500,000 off this exact system, so it does work. Unfortunately this so called system has been sold to almost every consultant working in local business marketing.
So now I come along and do a show a year ago to a real warm room. Half way thru I realize everybody in the room of 100+ all have bought into one of these systems.
Man, +Lynette Young if you have ever had a room turn on you half way thru a show, you have not lived life to it's fullest. As soon as I got to the Q&A my first question was if the client should own the account.
You can guess what happened and I got up and got out of there fast. This is why IM has not embraced G+, because so many invested in this very profitable system and don't want to give up their profits.
One reason my product launch only made half of what it should for my G+ system that is totally green hat. The consultant mindset just does not get how we really do things here and I fight that all the time in my own consultancy of consultants.
Well, that's it for me, that is the whole truth here guys, is that there are tons of big media companies doing just what I said above and until they are gone we will continue to see fake reviews and monetized negative reviews continue on G+ Places pages.
Again not naming names, I can't piss up my IM friends that are using and selling these systems even now. Good luck with that though guys, since the bad thing about blackhat, is when you get caught, it ALL goes bye bye, not just a part….
+Chris Lang I here ya Chris. Like you I've a bunch of IMer friends all doing just that – making an absolute killing with WSO etc etc
I've had heated debates over ethics and their argument generally comes down to [paraphrased] "Just trying to put food on the table"
There is, +Lynette Young says, no short cut – and that's what puts off many IMers – as they're always looking for the quick $ – then run a mile when it all goes t*ts up leaving clients wondering WTF went wrong…
+Lee Smallwood Man, you simply have not lived until you are in front of 100 people that have wound their whole biz around blackhat and you tell them they are doing it wrong.
I am cool with BHat too, but I try to tell them, sooner or later it will all go bye bye. It's kinda like sending spam, very profitable but very illegal LOL.
they're always looking for the quick $ – then run a mile when it all goes t*ts up leaving clients wondering WTF went wrong…
And that is what is going to happen, all it takes is one pissed up client that goes crying to Google and reports them. Then the whole shebang goes bye bye and a day.
Then were does that leave you? With lawsuits up the ying yang!
or here +Chris Lang http://goo.gl/XTwV7 😉
+Barry Schwartz – fantastic article Barry, and I'm enjoying quite a few others there! Great way to enjoy my coffee this morning:)
+Lynette Young Thanks for the link!