FAKE NEWS
As someone who had once worked for a company that was effected by fake comments and reviews, I can definitely say I can understand the impact it makes on a brand. We sold various sorts of products on amazon. They had paid people to post false reviews and photos on our page, even posting photos of our products broken (which they broke of course). We quickly learned that Amazon can be a jungle of people, who compete, and will do anything in their hands to sabatoage another company or competitor, just to “one up” them. Ok, I hope that did not come across too harsh, and I can say for the most part this is not always the case. But, at the same time, this is an issue to keep in mind, at all times, for any brand on any social media platform. Sure enough, with technology, many of these types of “scammers” are caught. Especially on amazon where it can track users who create multiple acounts by tracking IP addresses. Over the past couple of years, we have learned to outsmart IP adresses and tracking and replace humans with robots. Quite innovative, right?
Although the idea of bots sound super cool, it actually poses a great threat to us as marketers. How can we sucessfully collect honest data if it is corrupted by false personals. I cannot say it completely invalidates our data, because data cannot be soleley measured by numbers, it must take into acount situations like this, which distorts the exact numbers.
As marketers, we have to be aware, and know who and what we are competing against. A company may have thousands of followers or viewers, but we must challenge oursleves and ask “are they real”. Fake reviews doesnt necassrily invalidate the data, but will defintely change up the veracity.
This is in fact the reality of business, we all stumble across problems. Not everything is smooth sailing, because if things were so easy to acheive than it would be meaningless. In every industry there will always be competition, but in this case it is egged on by falsehood and misrepresentation. That is why it is so important for marketers not to get swallowed up and distracted by fake reviews and followers and not loose your cool.
