sometimes it’s amazing how quickly the internet can work against you as a digital marketer.
Last week it was discovered very quickly indeed that Belkin, provider of electronic bits and bobs such as network cards etc., had allegedly posted to the Amazon Mechanical Turk system (a marketplace for getting work carried out by an army of human workers – the kind of thing computers are good at in scale but not good at in ability) asking for people to write “fake” reviews of it’s products for them – applying a 5/5 rating, and while at it, mark down bad reviews to get them out of the way. This was, again allegedly, done by Michael Bayard who is a Business Development Representative.
This is bad enough in it’s own right, the someone “might” think this is a good thing to do. But within a short time it was spotted by someone, and then reported on Engadget.com
OUCH!
Today we see on Belkin’s own website a letter within their press section where they say how disappointed they are for the fact that this “may” have happened by a Belkin employee and that in fact they “support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad” as of course they should.
Sometimes these lessons have to get learnt the hard way, but i thought this kind of thing had gone extinct a long time ago – but it seems that every now and then someone “might” just get it wrong and think they can influence things in the wrong way.
Belkin’s President, Mark Reynoso, who posted the letter on their own site has got it right when he says “both good and bad” – that’s the benefit to getting feedback about your products, being able to see where you are going wrong and then make them better!
It worked for Palm recently – their new Pre has made them the golden child once more and they used to get a serious kicking from all over the place – even getting an open letter from Engadget.com – to which they responded in an open way!
transparency – it’s the key to this kind of activity.
Don’t make the mistake that Michael Bayard may have made, allegedly, and trust your audience to do the right thing.
Howard
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