Online reviews are definitely a valuable thing for a business’s reputation.
They help consumers to see whether a company is reputable and whether their services/products are of quality and worth the cost. Trust for these reviews is at a high of 80%, and many consumers are more than willing to trust them and buy products if the post was positive. However, these consumers will only believe the posts if they believe that they are authentic.
Because online reviews are of such importance to a business’s reputation, many are taking to services that will create fake posts to help your company’s reputation. This can help businesses who are new to the market or those who already have a terrible reputation and want to try to balance things out a bit.
Whilst this may seem tempting in order to help your business, there are many reasons as to why you shouldn’t buy online reviews for your business, and here are some of them.
It is against the rules
On many of the platforms used by companies and users to post reviews, it is against the rules to post fake ones that can influence the view or reputation of the company. Many of these platforms will have software looking out for fake posts and ensuring that those who are caught taking part in this action will receive bans or possibly even legal action taken against them.
As it is against the rules and there is the possibility of legal action, this could further harm a business’s reputation and do more harm than good when purchasing fake posts. Some of these platforms, such as Yelp, will tag businesses that are caught buying fake posts and this will definitely cause harm to their reputation not only on Yelp but on other platforms as users will see this tag and the word will spread.
It creates distrust
When companies buy fake posts on certain platforms, it creates an air of distrust. These online reviews are supposed to be there to help other consumers see what the company and/or the product is about. By pushing fake posts, you are jeopardizing the entire point of the platform(s) and ruining the point. This makes it hard for other consumers to trust what is being told to them and it will get to a point where online platforms for this purpose will become obsolete. Consumers, in general, will not trust any reviews, and thereby no one will know where to go for factual information. Furthermore, this could harm your business as people will not know whether to trust you or not due to a lack of reviews about your products, resulting in them choosing not to buy.
You miss out on actual customer feedback
When you post fake reviews and inundate online platforms with them, you are not going to see the actual reviews posted by real customers. This means you are missing out on valuable customer feedback that could significantly help you make improvements to your business that lead to better feedback and positive changes. With so many fake posts, you will not be able to tell the difference between the real ones and fake ones, and you cannot see whether you are doing something right or not.
In summary, the purchasing of online reviews is a bad idea for many reasons.
These include the fact it is against the rules and unethical, it creates an air of distrust in an otherwise innocent and helpful community and you are missing out on valuable customer feedback which could actually help your business to improve properly.
