There’s no more denying it. Social media is not a fad. Facebook and Twitter aren’t going away, blogs are no longer the ugly second-cousins of newspapers, and there’s no way you’re going to stop people from talking about you or your business online. Don’t believe me? Just look at some of these facts compiled by social media expert and author Erik Qualman.
- If Facebook were a country, it would be the third largest country in the world. (350 million users would place it ahead of the United States and behind China and India)
- There are over 200 million blogs. 54% of bloggers post new content or use Twitter daily.
- 80% of companies using LinkedIn as a primary tool to find employees.
The list goes on and on, but here’s my personal favorite: 78% of consumers trust peer recommendations, while only 14% trust ads.
Of course, this begs the question: Where are these peer recommendations? Well, they are on Facebook in the form of status updates and messages. They are on Twitter in the form of tweets, retweets, and hashtags. And, most importantly, they are on consumer review sites like Yelp, Epinions, and CitySearch. But this begs yet another question: Are the recommendations on consumer review sites legitimate? The answer to this, like most things involving Web 2.0, is multi-layered.
Typically, consumer review websites do not have any safeguards in place to prevent users from leaving slanderous or inaccurate reviews. Furthermore, given the anonymous nature of these review communities, it is often impossible for business owners to determine whether a review is even real, or if it’s been left by a malicious employee or competitor. If a business owner can’t establish whether or not a complaint is genuine, how are they supposed to make positive changes to their services?
That’s not to say that consumer review sites have no value, however. To the contrary, if you are on a site like Yelp and you’re careful about who you follow (primarily people you know like your friends or family), it is a great way to learn about new businesses. Additionally, despite the fear over negative reviews, the majority of reviews left on consumer review websites are positive.
Whether you are a consumer or a business owner, the most important thing you need to know about consumer review websites is that they are not infallible. Although we have moved away from the world of professional critics into a society where everyone’s opinions carry equal weight online, that doesn’t mean that the best or most accurate information always bubbles up to the top. If you are using a consumer review site, take the information with a grain of salt. If there’s some place you really want to try, but you are dissuaded by negative reviews, consider asking the business owner for their side of the story.
5 comments ↓
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Very interesting blog post.
A company that I’m working on called Viewpointr, is actually trying to solve the question you asked — Where are these peer recommendations? Often times, we want a viewpoint from a particular type of person regarding a website, restaurant, etc., but the information out there so far is not that well connected to us personally. Viewpointr is trying to solve the problem of getting insight from people outside of your network (which is often what you would like to hear from), by using your friends of friends, which is your trusted network.
Good blog post. Glad that you’ve voiced the problem as it specifically relates to consumer review sites.
Cheers,
Andre
[...] I talked about how important consumer review sites are to small businesses. There’s simply no denying the fact that people are using the [...]
Thanks for the comment Andre and good luck with your company.
[...] I talked about how important consumer review sites are to small businesses. There’s simply no denying the fact that people are using the [...]
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