As a small business owner, maybe you’ve felt desperate to build positive customer reviews on the various online review sites. Whatever you do, be ethical about it. Posting fake reviews in order to enhance your company’s reputation is wrong and doesn’t work in your favor.
Not only that, but consumers today are much smarter than that and can usually tell a genuine review vs. a bogus one. This only hurts your reputation – it doesn’t help at all.
If your potential customers – or even existing customers for that matter – senses that you are creating and posting fake reviews, they will run the other way. They will wonder what else is “fake” about your company and avoid you at all costs.
Believe it or not, there are ethical ways to build your online reputation, which will result in better customer relationships, as well as a surge in new customers.
For instance, you can simply start asking your happy customers to leave “real” reviews. If your company is providing the level of quality and service that your patrons expect, this should be an easy task.
Most people today don’t mind going online to post a review of companies that they are satisfied with, although it does take a little more work sometimes. People are quick to go online and post reviews when they’re not happy, but if you simply ask your happy customers, they are likely to post a review as well.
Creativity and very deep thinking are necessary when it comes to motivating your customers to leave genuine reviews – faking it is just not worth it. In fact, it could cause the opposite effect, which is the last thing you want.