Taken from ReviewTrackers.com: 70 percent of US consumers read reviews before buying online 11 to 14 percent of companies pay for online reviews The average fake review costs 5$ Americans waste about $5.5 billion on Christmas gift shopping because of fake reviews These statistics, if accurate, are absolutely insane! 5.5 BILLION wasted! That’s incredible. However, that’s not the most important statistic on the list for you and your business. 70 percent of US consumers read reviews before buying online. This means that people are looking for any holes in your brand or your competitor’s brand. Now is the time to close yours and open...

There’s a great article making its round in the media today: KlearGear.com: Woman Hit With $3,500 Fine And Bad Credit Score After Writing Negative Review Of Online Retailer Here’s the story in short. A company gave shitty service. The client wrote a negative review on — a classic! — RipOffReports. The company then invented a fine for them (per small writing in a the terms & conditions the client never read), which went right to a debt collection agency — and BAM, their credit score is dinged. Lots going on here. Where to start? First: The companies will be ugly with you. Lets just admit it right up front. So you need to be prepared. Read the small print. Second: a great defense? Get everything in writing. Everything. Documentation is next to Godliness. Third: you (companies!) can do the same — albeit more honestly, fairly and nicely. This company gave crappy customer service — and you shouldn’t. Obviously give good service! But you can also put in little terms that they won’t read, that you can use to your advantage if they turn out to be obnoxious. (This isn’t a defense of KlearGear — they clearly didn’t deliver and did a bad job!) Fourth: great idea to just send a bill right to a debt collection agency. BAM. They’re the experts on dinging people who try to ding you. Noted. Adding it to my repertoire right now...

Today’s story is a goody. A law firm faked its own online reviews on Yelp. And Yelp SUED THEM. On the surface, this is a big red flag: don’t fake online reviews! Yelp might sue you! Of course, they are right: you shouldn’t fake anything. That’s immoral, bad, and likely to cause you a lot of problems (as these guys have seen!). But lets dig below the surface. First, these guys are morons. Doing it from their own office? C’mon, at least go to the cafe down the street, or do it from your home! Lesson: don’t be a moron. Second, these guys PREVIOUSLY SUED YELP. Ummm, okay, lets think about this. You sue Yelp. Do you think Yelp would continue rewarding you? Lets use a metaphor. Say, I own a shop that makes cakes. You buy a cake, and then sue me because, say, it was different than the cake you expected. Then, a few weeks later, you come into my cake store and ask if we would want to sell your cakes to the public. If it were my cake store, I would think, “F YOU, I just spent a bazillion dollars fighting off the lawyers — and now you want me to help make YOU MONEY?”. Conclusion: if you think you might want to work with someone in the future, then try your gosh darn hardest to not sue them. Remember, don’t think that these companies have objective algorithms. They don’t. It’s their own property, their own formula. You’re just using it because it’s helpful. You’re probably not even paying for it. They can do whatever they want. As they say: “if you’re not the client, you’re the product.” Which are you? Which do you want to...