Honesty Is A Policy

The Consumerist has a piece about Customers Fight Back Over Fake Amazon Reviews.

A couple of things strike me;

The Amazon review system has a bad reputation.
The comments at the consumerist are an education in themselves.

hewhoroams writes

“Note to self, create multiple accounts when posting fake reviews. Also, always be sure to throw in one seemingly negative thing that isnt’ that bad.”

There’s many a review site that already uses that formula.  But as Frank Kern has often pointed out knowing that the mechanism is in place doesn’t mean it’s not going to work.

Dooley writes,

“I rely on Amazon reviews when deciding on certain types of photographic equipment, but I only take heed when there are MANY reveiws, and I can tell when someone is bullshitting in a camera review, because their claims are usually outrageous (at least compared to other reviews both on Amazon and on other websites like BHPHOTOVIDEO.COM)”

Now there’s a sensible shopper, or as we used to say when I was a kid – a comparison shopper.  So if your potential customer is going to comparison shop make sure they come back to you by having a really great offer of real value.

ElizabethD writes,

“Consumer review features that I actually find useful are the ones on Target.com and Sierra Trading Post. I never even bother looking at reviews on Amazon.com; everyone seems to have an agenda.”

She has written a wonderful testimonial that gives the reader a couple of choices to go elsewhere.  Let’s hope Amazon is paying attention.  Actually I’m sure Amazon is paying attention they are one of the most innovative shopping sites on the web.  Notice she writes she doesn’t bother with the reviews, but the implication is she does bother to shop there.

codepage9 writes,

“What about a competing company that creates positive reviews for their rivals then calls them out using ANOTHER account? The internet is a tricky beast.”

Welcome to the world of “business”.  Novelists have been using this one for about as long as the novel has been in existence.  And then there was Shakespeare with all his plays.  Anyone remember parts of Lear?
codepage9 is one of the new breed of writers and artists, the ones who write serial novels for cell phones.  He has created a novel in comments.  He gave the plot twist and others in their comments begin to tell the story.

So to sum it up, business is business, tools are not the business.

Save energy-Smile

It takes 17 muscles to smile and 43 to frown. Go on …
save yourself some energy!

Hey it made me laugh.

Another great quote from Martin Avis’ of http://www.kickstartdaily.com/

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Getting Things Done

Sometimes the hardest thing in the world is to just do something.  We set goals, we buy books on productivity, we attend seminars and ….

The point of this blog is to assess different means of moving forward.  I’m a staunch believer in the philosophy of one step at a time.  Unfortunately we often forget that, that means one step forward.  It’s easy to run in circles and think that you’re making progress.  Activity is not the same as moving forward.

In order to move forward you have to identify which way is forward and you have to have some way of marking off your progress.  And it’s definitely true that the map is not the territory.  To often we make that mistake.  We spend days drawing up great plans and then wonder why we got nowhere.