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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”.
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| 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)”
Social media has allowed people to take control, like you mentioned in your blog. It has also made companies more liable for the products they put out there to the public. Both the customer and the company need to maintain honesty, transparency and credibility when they interact. It is hard for any company to keep track of honest reviews and hard to receive harsh ones. Just as I am currently commenting on this blog post using my username, review sites should find ways to authenticate customer reviews. Companies should also establish a procedure to response to negative comments on their products, even if they know they are not true. Admitting to mistakes is the first step to rebuilding trust with the customer.
ReplyDeleteAfter reading the comments of my blog, I think a lot about the feasibility of keepng track of honest reviews and how to authenic customers' reviews by company. It's true that it's so difficult, especially for a large coporation, to keep track on all reviews. However I still think that company should select some reviews and show its customers the improment process, which can help a company build up a transparent image among its customers. In addition,maybe it's hard for a review website to come up with method to authenticate customer reviews. The reviews are hard to be judged from a certain criterion, unless the reviews have nothing with the products. For now, I till don't have a good idea about this question.
DeleteI think that as consumers, we will be getting smarter about reading reviews. In traditional media, the publication's reputation served as validation for reviews by their writers; while we can now read reviews from anyone, we also cannot easily validate them. Perhaps as time goes on, sites (such as the traditional Consumer Reports) will be the definitve source of reviews, or major retailers such as Amazon will need to develop better ways of verifying both reviewers and their comments (fake reviews have long been an issue for Amazon).
ReplyDeleteYes, I agree with you that customers will become smarter about facing large amount of reviews on website. Some fake reviews are easily to identified. But sometimes we still get effected by some fake reviews. Perhaps this is not a quetions only existing in social media, it's on the Internet. Because people can say everthing they want anonymously; it's hard to figure out which is true, which is fake. But I still bileve that the quantity of method used to solve problems is more than the problems.
DeleteI wonder if companies aren't simply shooting themselves in the foot by having "internet hirelings" load their sites with positive reviews. If you weed out negative feedback, you'll never get a truly honest picture of your product. Unfortunately, the reviewing system is open to abuse. For instance, restaurant owners have been known to write negative reviews of their comepetitors' restaurants on Yelp and other sites. When reviewing is based on the honor system, there is alway someone who will be dishonorable.
ReplyDeleteI alos think that rulling out all negative reviews is stupid for a company. Keeping interact with customers and getting suggestions from your cosumers can help you a lot in improving your products and service. There is no doubt that some companies win a temporary good reputation according to defaming their competitors. However, it's hard, even impssible, to control the Internet, especially people can post their comments anonymously. However, some vicious slanders are easily to be identified. That's one part of Internet time. Maybe people will come up with a better method to solve it in the future. Every era has its problems.
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