Negative reviews? Turn them to your advantage



 www.amazon.com

The movement groundswell “comes from a thousand sources and washed over traditional business like a flood.(page 9)” “And while you can’t stop it, you can understand it. You can not only live with it; you can thrive in it.(page 9)” That’s the most important point in the movement groundswell. Just like you are standing on the cliff edge, only flying over canyon with some social technologies tools can you reach the prosperous side. If you turn back, you will fall behind. This is the reality. The history will move on. If you can’t change the world, then change yourselves. 

Just as the book Groundswell says:”In the groundswell, relationships are everything.(page 18)” The executives of companies want to communicate with consumers through social media—conducting some research, collecting feedbacks and so on. If you want consumers to buy your products, you should try to analyze and understand them—what they need, why they should buy your products. What’s more, nowadays, people are not alone; people are and desire to connect to each other. Maybe in the past times, they will ask companies and organizations for help. However, they can support each other through social technologies and unite, though they know nothing about each other, in making some influences in this society today. Forums, ratings, and reviews are good examples that show reaction among people who are involved in this movement.

As a matter of fact, almost all executives won’t regard reviews, ratings or comments on the website just as something fun. Considering that they are the important part in building a marketing strategy, to a very large extent, they are equal to the reputation of companies. Consequently, reviews are more positive, it’s much better to build a good image of a company. In China, some companies hire some people to post good online comments, vote for or give a high grade on their products in order to create a false impression that this company has a great reputation. We call the hired people “internet hirelings”.

www.amazon.com
 

 

http://shopping.yahoo.com
 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 



www.amazon.com
 

 

   But shall we think about the online reviews in a new angle? First of all, we do agree  that positive comments of a company can help to build a good reputation. And as we all know, online reviews, comments, and ratings are important source that companies will collect some feedbacks from them, which can let executives have a more overall understanding of their products and improve them with the advises. However, we should not be afraid of some negative comments and very anxious to remove them in no time. On the contrary, we should use them to build a mutual trust with consumers.

 
Compared to remove negative reviews, we should post them on official site. More importantly, website should allow consumer to track the process that companies improve the products. This act can show companies’ sincerity to manufacture high quality products and provide the best service for consumers. As a matter of fact, the most important thing is to catch consumers’ mind psychologically. Firstly, posting bad reviews demonstrate that this is an honest organization—they don’t want to cover something truth from consumer. Secondly, compared to remove the reviews passively, taking an active communication with consumers is more important. Thirdly, just as the case, what happen to digg and aacs la(page3-6), tells us” people on the Internet showed they were in charge(page 6)”. Consequently, a company should let their consumers feel that they indeed can change something. This is the reason why they should allow consumers to track the process that they are improving products based on the reviews, comments on the Internet.

There is no doubt that there is much noise influence us to receive some messages from senders. The large amounts of information carry a heavier burden on our brains. How to attract consumers’ attention is vital to success. What’s more, a mutual trust that spends several years to build up may disappear in a flash. Consequently, removing or changing negative reviews help nothing to improve the product and service. However, in addition, those vicious slanders should be ignored or removed with no hesitation.

In all, negative comments, reviews, and ratings—something help to build up a mutual trust with consumers--are not monsters. Since you cannot get isolated from this movement groundswell, you should keep straight on. “You may go a little slower or a little faster, but you have to move forward.(page 75)”

Microblog: helping online shops reach out to cunstomers in a new way

 

   I am a big fan of online shopping in Taobao and sina microblog. As a matter of fact, both of them are very popular in China now. Considering that microblog is a new and widespread social media tool, no one can ignore its influence on this society. The online shop in Taobao marketplace is no exception. Since the majority of other countries’ people know little about microblog and Taobao marketplace, next, I will make a rough introduction of them.



http://www.weibo.com/

  Microblog is a broadcast medium in the form of blog. It’s very popular in China now, especially in some big cities and among the young people. Microblog differs from a traditional blog that its content is typically much smaller, in both actual size and aggregate file size. And it allows users to exchange small elements of content such as short sentences, individual images or videos. (source from Wikipedia) In all, maybe I can use a formula to summarize this tool:  microblog = twitter+facebook+youbube+news. And a video from YouTube can let us have a general understanding of this tool.

 

 



http://www.taobao.com/index_global.php

   Taobao marketplace is the largest website for online shopping, founded by Alibaba Group. It facilitates consumer-to-consumer (C2C) retail by providing a platform for small businesses and individual entrepreneurs to open online retail stores. (source from Wikipedia) With the online shopping becoming more and more common and popular, many people, especially the youth, regard Taobao as their mainly shopping destination. However, compared with the large corporation, most of the online retail stores can’t afford the fee to do some research in this market and survey their consumers through some professional companies or experts. Consequently, microblog is an easy and useful way for them to listen and talk to their customers, energize their stores and help their customers support each other.

What’s more, I will use an example to demonstrate this issue. Eunchae’s house is a store, I shopped a lot when I was in China, that mainly sells cosmetic product and some interesting stuff from South Korea.( http://eunchae.taobao.com/) The storekeeper has a microblog account(http://www.weibo.com/eunchae) that helps her a lot in the selling. Next part, I will take Eunchae’s house as an example to talk about how microblog help the online shops reach out to their consumers in a new way.
 1.  Listening. Since the most of whom play microblog are young people, as well as those who prefer to shop online. So the target audiences are microbloggers, which means that shopkeepers can use this tool to listen to their consumers and better understand them. The shopkeeper Eunchae introduces some new products in the microblog and makes a simple survey whether her consumers will like it or not.

2. Talking. It’s more likely that consumer will search their microblog than shop in the online shop every day. So shopkeeper Eunchae will put some advertisements— part of the products are in a big discount or you can post your comments of the products you have used before  to earn the present—in the microblog , which can spread her ideas to her target audiences.

3. Energizing. Based on the function of the microblog, you can @ your friends to share something interesting with them. So when consumers think that this store is deserved to shop in and the products inside are high quality, they will let their friends know.

 

 

 

 

4. Supporting. Considering that consumer will post some reviews of the products they used, exchange some information about the products or resell something that are unsuitable for them, other consumers can get some advices from microblog. It means that they can support each other from this tool.
 

 

 

  In conclusion, microblog is a useful and efficient tool for online shopkeeper—it is worthy to have its place in their groundswell strategies. For online shopkeepers, keeping an eye on their target audiences is crucial to the success.