Social media - engage at your peril January 21
Social media is all around us and brands are increasingly attempting to leverage its power in influencing consumers. There’s a lot of nervousness in jumping in though, since engagement in social media can easily back-fire, as Belkin recently discovered when it attempted to influence online shoppers to buy its products.
As e-consultancy recently reported…
Arlen Parsa of The Daily Background broke the news after discovering the Mechanical Turk task posted by a a person named Mike Bayard. He used LinkedIn to confirm that Bayard was a Belkin employee.
Bayard’s posting requested that Mechanical Turk users:
- “Always give a 100% rating (as high as possible)“
- “Write as if you own the product and are using it“
- “Thank the website for making you such a great deal“
- “Mark any other negative reviews as ‘not helpful’ once you post yours“
In return for each online review, the fake reviewers would be paid 65 cents.”
Belkin’s CEO responded saying they didn’t know it was happening. Hmmm….
One of the lessons we can take out from this is that openness and honesty are key! Without it, you risk causing damage to your brand. In our ever-connected, ever-online world it’s all too easy to be caught out.
It’s also important to develop clear rules of engagement which govern how the brand engages within social media spaces - this ensures the risks are minimised and gives content authors guidelines on how they should behave in different circumstances.
As part of the Creston Digital Forum, we’re running a seminar on social media where we’re inviting clients to come & listen to our view on how to engage. More details will follow…