Social Media Safety Warning: NY State fines $300,000 for fake reviews. Learn to protect your brand.
His first point why this is good news is the following: "All ethical marketers know that we survive and thrive only through the trust and respect of our customers. Any effort to clean up the the bad actors is good for those of us who base our reputation and leadership on honesty and openness."
Andy continues with setting up guidelines for a company how to handle "getting" reviews, rule number 1: "Never pay for posts or reviews. Do it even once, and you break the trust forever. Everyone will assume you pay for all reviews."
However Scott White (from BIG) cares to differ with not allowing companies to pay for reviews:
"Blog reviews are becoming a big business and have put a lot of bloggers to work. That’s a good thing." Paying for reviews is "the biggest pile of crap I think I’ve ever heard and here’s why. Paying for someone to review your product or service has been going on since the beginning of capitalism. As long as the review is UNBIASED it’s kosher. Period. End of story. Bloggers are allowed to write whatever they want, good or bad."
However can a person be unbiased when he has received money? Lets take a look at the pharmacy business or any business. Doctors who were receiving gifts or incentives used to be common practice, but many companies have set up guidelines to limit this, due to the ethical issue. Business should be done fair, doctor practices should be untouched, a patient should receive the best medicine for him/her, not because a doctor just received a nice trip to the Bahama's from one manufacturer.
Is it the same with writing reviews for companies/products? Are bloggers perhaps different and does the transparancy of the net create such an environment that I would still value a review if I knew some company paid that person to test the product. If that blogger has written many reviews for many different companies, yes perhaps, but still he could favor one company more than the other. But even when this person is not being paid he would still have preferences.
Bloggers are allowed to write about anything they want of course, but should they be paid to be stimulated, the question perhaps is whether bloggers really need stimulation? Isn't it in the nature of the blogger to be stimulated by itself to share thoughts and discuss ideas. In this huge community of bloggers you can find somebody who is interested in your product. A company could contact the blogger to make him/her aware of products, but actually pay?
If Bloggers receive money to review, they should mention that they received money to do the review. Would I still value his review if he wrote reviews only for this company? What's in it for me to believe him I would think? He receives an incentive, why should I be unbiased in believing him?
Does paying reviewers kill the bloggers credibility? And therefor backfire on the paying company?
Chriss his post:http://bit.ly/4msr1t
Andy's post: http://bit.ly/GYXuT
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