Living in a world of social media, people are constantly interacting with their friends and family members, making new connections and communicating globally. We’ve made the world a smaller place as we’re able to access almost any information on our phone. Typically we want to know how those we care about are doing, but we also want to know about our favorite brands and organizations. With this, Facebook has become a form of mobilization and a means of consumerism — with products come reviews. What happens, though, when the reviews we’re using to trust online businesses come from the businesses themselves?
According to Invespcro.com, 90 percent of consumers will read reviews before going to a business, and 72 percent said positive reviews make them trust local businesses more. According to Moz.com, 67 percent of consumers said online reviews impacted their decision to make major purchases.
“Any kind of review on any kind of social media or website, like Yelp, I think they’re important. People pay attention to them,” said Pablo Zarate, director of student services for Associated Students of the University of Utah (ASUU).
When a business reviews itself, or when employees of that business provide reviews, most people won’t know. Employees are their own people and no one can know every person who works for every company in every country. However, when these employees review their own services positively or negatively, the 67 percent relying on these reviews is now receiving biased information that brings them in or turns them away from the organization.
“I think anybody can publish a review for anybody,” Zarate said. “I think it’s important for anybody to review an organization. I can see where there would be some kind of bias, because when there’s somebody representing the organization … they may not be critical of their comment.”
His advice is to be critical of reviews.
Since many businesses and organizations rely on the number of people participating, donating or purchasing from them as an important indicator of their reach and ability to influence their demographic, reviews are an important way to measure engagement. Based on the feedback given in reviews, businesses may alter programs to better benefit their targeted audience.
For smaller organizations like ASUU, reviews — negative or positive, word-of-mouth or online — have an effect on how students view ASUU’s role at the U. Reviews can influence the expectations students have of the organization even if the student never participates in an ASUU event themselves.
“I think social media marketing is a great way to reach out to students because a lot of students use Facebook,” Zarate said. “Having events being sponsored when everyone scrolls through their feed is a great way for us to do that. … Students or anyone who sees that ‘sponsored by ASUU’ has the chance to acknowledge that there is an event and know about it.”
Zarate is seeing more students show up at events and spend time in the ASUU offices studying or spending time with friends. Last year, he felt the ASUU offices had an awkward air because there weren’t often many people around. After Zarate, Lilly Kanishka, who is the ASUU diversity director, Saeed Shihab, who is the ASUU vice president of Student Relations, and a few others created a social media campaign to write reviews about ASUU, more people started to come by and changed the tone.
Their campaign shows that social media influences consumers’ behaviors. It is an important aspect of a modern lifestyle that has evolved to encompass the opinions of many as a means to rate and compare even the smallest of organizations.
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