I gotta vent. I work in marketing, and I really enjoy most of what I do — MOST. Unfortunately, there's an element to my job that I absolutely loathe. Every week, I'm tasked with going through our clients' Yelp and Google reviews and providing meaningful responses to show that our clients give a shit (even though they really don't). You wouldn't believe the kind of crap I have to sort through!
I'm not even talking about dealing with Karens or anything like that; I actually like that part as I get free license to hit them with facts and essentially tell them to fuck off. There are two types of reviews that really chap my ass:
- Reviews that are as fake as the day is long and clearly paid for by the client
- Genuine reviews from people that just HAVE TO share their story with others, as uninspired as they may be.
And to make matters worse, one client shamelessly incentivizes customers to leave these saccharine, overly-positive reviews when their profiles show that they've never reviewed any other business before. Now, they want me to respond to these BS reviews within a 24-hour period — as if I just sit around all day with nothing to do, waiting for their customers to leave insincere reviews.
Moral of the story, kids: unless you're reviewing a small mom-and-pop business with no external marketing, your Google/Yelp reviews don't mean shit. You're not bringing awareness to a business, you're just making some poor schmuck who has to sift through this garbage's life worse.