Social media rests on a fundamental democratic premise; that collective wisdom can discern the truth. It’s the same premise that undergirds the jury system – the idea that you can only fool some of the people some of the time and that regular people pooling their experiences, education, insights and pure brain power can sort out facts from fiction.
In social media everyone is a critic
or a reviewer. Everyone has the right to rank, rate and review products,
services, service providers and brands. By reading the posted comments of
peers, many of us find others confronting like situations, people who have
already experienced what we are about to undergo and like-minded folks with
similar tastes, perspectives and outlooks.
But as grassroots ratings begin to pop-up
in almost every field, I’m not sure I know who is doing the scoring or what
criteria are being used to assess performance. And as these ratings get
circulated on the Web, they are apt to get blanket acceptance on their face by
a public eager to search and find data on-demand, without careful consideration
of the sources or bona fides of those creating this data.
On eBay or Amazon you can find
ratings and reviews of all types. The problem is you don’t know who these
reviewers are other than people who have the time or the ego to write reviews.
In some cases the reviews are themselves rated for usefulness. But the same
problem of meta data exists; we don’t know who the reviewer of the reviews is
and other than their command of the language have no way to assess bias,
credibility, intention or expertise.
Imagine how this spirals out of
control when every brand and every product or service from doctors and dentists
to retail stores to plumbers, roofers and electricians has prices, performance
and reviews posted online. How can we compare one rating or ranking scale to
another? How can we compare one restaurant-ranking site to another? How could
any reasonable person sort through them?
Facebook, MySpace and Twitter are
quick-response visceral media. People express momentary and sustained emotions.
So sorting out immediate frustration from deeply considered warnings are
difficult. If you doubt me just pick a favorite brand and search for “ Brand X
Sucks.”
From the marketer’s perspective, how
could any brand efficiently follow the conversations much less influence or
respond to them? And while many brands are making customer service and customer
intimacy claims for social media activities, there’s no convincing cases to
show that they are either keeping up with the issues or persuading anybody.
This is a serious marketing challenge in the evolving world of user-generated
content.
This is particularly vexing because
there is nothing more credible than a word-of-mouth review from a trusted
source. And it looks like the criteria for “trusted” online source is getting
looser and looser by the day. The same issue underlies the debate about
customer reviews on manufacturers’ and retailers’ web sites.
Independent review sites like Zagat.com
and review aggregators like Judy's Book,
Angie’s List or Buzzillions are flourishing. In these
cases site visitors know they are getting a pig-in-a-poke and read the reviews
with a grain of salt. They also understand that the reviews are monitored and
edited to insure some kind of balance and to screen out obvious wackos and
shills.
On websites of firms making and
selling things the expectations seem to subtlety shift. Visitors expect that
the reviews are from real customers even if they aren't sure if the worst ones
are edited out or if the company flacks quickly respond to the nastiest ones.
These days it takes a fairly secure organization to air dirty laundry on the
official site. Most don’t.
And you can assume that
behind-the-scenes battles range between those arguing for the a pure party line
(e.g. "Everything we do is great and so are we.") and the
user-generated content digerati who argue, "We are real. We sometimes
screw up. Our customers love us because we are real so if we show our flaws, we
confirm and validate their expectations and extend their brand loyalty."
It seems to me that if you make or
sell anything of value, you need to stand behind your products and services.
You need to give your customers the opportunity to respond to your sales
process and your products by posting reviews. And while you can screen them for
civility or legality and impose language standards you ought to let the public
speak and let the public assess the validity or credibility of what they read
on your site.
Reviews are a great source of
intelligence as well as a brand barometer. And frankly, the truth is going to
come out anyway on Twitter, Facebook or YouTube . The trick is to separate the truth
from the rants.
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