Mechanical Turk for reviews

[ClaytonKendall]

Hi all,

The website we run is B2B and we have a very difficult time getting customers to write reviews. We have some ideas in the works to get some organically, but I'm exploring the option of using Mechanical Turk. I want the reviews to be sincere, or at least somewhat insightful for customers, but mainly I'm looking for unique content. Does anyone have experience with this or advice on the matter? Thanks in advance!

[EGOL]

Just opinion... If you want content hire a genuine content writer.... if you want reviews then ask your customers instead of getting "pot luck" from MT.... your customers are smarter than you think... they will be able to smell the phony Turker BS.

[ClaytonKendall]

Thanks EGOL, I definitely see your point. Do you have any suggestions to get reviews in B2B? We literally don't get any product reviews at all.

[EGOL]

... if you want reviews then ask your customers....

Any time a customer tells you that they like a product or that you did a great job is an excellent time to ask for a review.  Tell them how much it would help you.

Also, lots of the review systems automatically send an email message to the customer a few days after the purchase (about the time it would arrive by mail).

If you do not ask for reviews they will not happen.

[menachemp]

How can you use Mechanical Turk here in an ethical way?  Are the writers going to actually use your product?  I doubt it (unless it's an informational product, and you're giving it away to them for free?  You didn't really offer too much information).

I agree with EGOL - if you don't ask for reviews, you wont get them.  In one of my businesses where this is relevant, we specifically ask for a review of the order process at the time of the order, on the thank you page.  We also email 24 hours later to solicit a review, and again 7 days later.  Anyone who actually does leave a review, we again hit them up for a social "share" or the review they just left.  Even with all of that, our review rate is only 1-2% of our customers.  Simply put, if you're not aggressively soliciting reviews, they're not going to happen.

On a more functional level, make sure it's as easy as possible to actually write the review.  Facebook or twitter integration could make it easier, streamlining the login process (or skipping it altogether), or getting rid of captcha (this would obviously go hand in hand with manually deleting junk reviews, or disallowing links of any kind).