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Monday, January 19, 2009

A great example of how NOT to use social media


Bad Belkin! According to Engadget, Belkin is allegedly paying folks to give their products positive reviews on Amazon as well as for knocking the competition down a few rungs.

"For a whopping $0.65 cents you can write a 5 out of 5 review of a Belkin product, and downrank negative reviews while you're at it."

This is exactly what companies don't grasp about social media. They know it can be influential but they don't understand that 1. It can't be manipulated and 2. If they do try to manipulate it, it will likely come back and bit them very, very hard.

For example, by (allegedly) doing this they're basically telling everyone, "Our products suck to the point we have to pay people to give them good reviews." Probably not the outcome they were looking for.