It is an almost guaranteed occurrence these days. If one person posts a negative review about your brand on social media, a cavalcade of trolls will jump in to provide their own false reviews about your products or service.
They usually follow a similar story to the original in order to remain realistic. This makes them hard for people to spot as fake, so while you know they are fake your potential customer base is losing faith with your brand. These fake reviews can cost businesses a lot of money and sometimes can put them out of business, so what exactly can you do about them?
Be professional
It might be tempting to reply in a vociferous manner to your trolls. But that is exactly what they want. If you reply to them in a negative way it will instantly make your brand look bad and make it seem like the fake review was right about you.
It will confirm to your potential customers that you are not a brand to be trusted and your reputation will take even more of a hit. Any and all replies that you give to any reviews, fake or otherwise, should be polite and cordial. Offer to help with any issues and provide contact methods. Dealing with fake reviews requires showing the watching public that what the review said is not the case.
If there is a deluge of fake reviews it may be too difficult for you to handle efficiently. Hundreds of reviews all coming in at once is too much for any one person to handle, especially if they have other aspects of the business to focus on.
In that case it is often necessary to employ someone to deal with the removal of these fake reviews for you. Reputation Defender is a company that specialises in ensuring that your brand reputation does not suffer from the malicious reviews that internet trolls might write about your business. A company such as this will take out the stress of having to deal with it, and because it is their speciality they are able to do it more quickly and efficiently than you could.
How to spot fake reviews
If a review uses foul and abusive language, there is a good chance it is fake. Most people have calmed down from their initial spurt of anger when they write a review. This means that genuine reviews very rarely use profanity or aggression in their tone. If you spot a review like this then it is worth checking with your employees to find out if the situation described actually happened. If it did not then you know that there is a good chance you are about to be the victim of a targeted troll attack.
Another good way to spot fake reviews is if the reviewer has records of overly positive reviews towards your competition in their review history. If that is the case then you can be quite certain that it is targeted by a competitor to try and damage your brand reputation. Any customers that you lose are likely to move to your competitor and so it makes sense for the competition to try and damage your brand. If you spot this then it is vital that you report any fake reviews, or allow your security measures to take over.
How to handle it personally
While having good cybersecurity in place is extremely vital to maintain the safety of your business, that does not mean that you should purely rely on it to deal with issues like this. There are a number of ways that you can deal with the issues yourself, without needing any technical knowledge. You do not have to take the following steps, but if you choose to then there is a good chance it will aid in the process of defending and subsequently repairing your reputation.
A good way to counteract a troll attack is to address it head on in your social media. Make a point of telling all of your followers that you are aware of the attacks. This will make sure that people who visit your page will know about the attacks and will take less notice of negative reviews if they spot them. It could also have the added bonus of persuading them to post positive reviews.
Once your security measures have succeeded in having any false reviews removed it will leave your page a sea of positive reviews which will repair any brand reputation damage and increase your brand’s positive reputation!
If you are the victim of a targeted attack it is important not to worry. As long as you have the right measures in place you will survive it.
