See Andy's other stuff:

Contact Me >>

You will always get caught

Belkin is the latest example of a company caught in an unethical word of mouth campaign. They had an employee paying for fake positive reviews, and trying to hide bad reviews.

That’s unethical, sleazy, and they got caught. Read about it here: 1 2 3 and all over the web.

This story wiped out any positive news they hoped to get from the Consumer Electronics Show. Their CEO had to call a press conference. Trust in the company is forever broken.

Lessons:

  1. You will always get caught.
  2. You will be publicly humiliated when you are caught. All those stories will stay on the web forever, undoing whatever you thought you were trying to gain from the fake reviews.

Here’s an important thing to understand: This is avoidable. Most of these scandals are caused by junior employees who were not properly trained in word of mouth ethics. You have to create a formal policy and train your team.

It is easy and quick to create a proper disclosure policy. I run an organization called the Blog Council that has created a Disclosure Policy Toolkit to help you. Download it and you’ll be OK.

Watch this video where I explain what to do, then forward this post.

If you’ve been busted for this sort of sleazery, contact me and we’ll help you do what you can to prevent it in the future.

P.S. Here’s another example: Carbonite doing the same thing, busted by the David Pogue in the New York Times.  I’m canceling all our corporate Carbonite subscriptions.

[contact-form-7 id="27185" title="contact-form 3 TellAFriend-Post"]