By now, you’ve probably heard about Belkin’s attempt to pump its products by paying for fake product views. If you haven’t, here’s thumbnail sketch. Michael Bayard, a business development representative for Belkin advertised for people to provide fake reviews of Belkin products using Mechanical Turk, a side business of Amazon.com. The blogosphere went wild with negative publicity, promoting Belkin CEO Mike Reynoso to post this letter on the Belkin Web site:
Belkin has always held itself to the highest standards of corporate ethics and its employees to the highest standards of personal integrity. Similarly, we support our online user community in discussion and reviews of our products, whether the commentary is good or bad. So, it was with great surprise and dismay when we discovered that one of our employees may have posted a number of queries on the Amazon Mechanical Turk website inviting users to post positive reviews of Belkin products in exchange for payment.
See the rest of this letter
OK, first of all, that’s a pretty good recovery. Why? The reason is that the furor mainly occurred in the blogosphere. Posting a letter online gives bloggers a reason to copy and post the letter to their blogs, thus ensuring that it is read by Belkin detractors.
Second, if you’re interested in getting online reviews and publicity, there are legitimate, if not more time consuming ways, to get visibility for your products. Here’s a short list:
Get legitimate reviews: provide access to your product to real consumers and ask them to post a review. Do not indicate how you would like them to write the review. And, for God’s sake, do not pay them to write the review!
Ask a trusted group of friends to review your product. However, you must make sure that 1) They are not connected in any way to your company or have any financial stake in your product, and 2) You do not influence the writing of the review in any way.
Given how rapidly the blogosphere blew the lid off of this story, it’s clear that bloggers have great influence. Pitch your product to them. Before you give access to your product, make sure you have a good story to tell. It’s not just about the product benefits. Make sure you know what the product means to your audience.
While traditional press is less influential than in the past, make sure you pitch traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.
How Belkin manages this issue is essential to the company gets it’s branding back on track. If you’re promoting, remember, keep it real.
OK, first of all, that’s a pretty good recovery. Why? The reason is that the furor mainly occurred in the blogosphere. Posting a letter online gives bloggers a reason to copy and post the letter to their blogs, thus ensuring that it is read by Belkin detractors.
Second, if you’re interested in getting online reviews and publicity, there are legitimate, if not more time consuming ways, to get visibility for your products. Here’s a short list:
Get legitimate reviews: provide access to your product to real consumers and ask them to post a review. Do not indicate how you would like them to write the review. And, for God’s sake, do not pay them to write the review!
Ask a trusted group of friends to review your product. However, you must make sure that 1) They are not connected in any way to your company or have any financial stake in your product, and 2) You do not influence the writing of the review in any way.
Given how rapidly the blogosphere blew the lid off of this story, it’s clear that bloggers have great influence. Pitch your product to them. Before you give access to your product, make sure you have a good story to tell. It’s not just about the product benefits. Make sure you know what the product means to your audience.
While traditional press is less influential than in the past, make sure you pitch traditional media outlets like newspapers, magazines, TV, radio, etc.
How Belkin manages this issue is essential to the company gets it’s branding back on track. If you’re promoting, remember, keep it real.
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