Dear readers, this excellent article is written by Chuck Linart and its original title is How to Identify a Trustworthy Review Site. So the author writes, If you've ever done product research on the Internet, you've encountered these "review sites" that are actually just stores trying to sell you products. I find this extremely annoying and deceptive, along the lines of those "How to get rich on the Internet" sites that have proliferated like locusts in the past couple of years. This isn't to say that all review sites are bad (or that all products portending to teach how to monetize the Internet are bad, for that matter, but that's another topic...), just that the bad ones seem to outnumber the good ones by a wide margin. Even the good ones have their down sides most of the time.

What is a consumer to do? The Internet provides a wonderful opportunity to help you be an informed consumer, but there is so much information -- and so much bad information -- that you really need some kind of filtering mechanism. The reason I started my site was that, in all the millions of sites out there, I found very few (none, actually) that met all the criteria of trustworthiness, though, in fairness a few independent blogs do come close. Unfortunately, I find it difficult to trust blog reviews because of blog review monetization sites that pay bloggers to write favorable reviews, and bloggers are under no legal obligation to tell you that they were paid to write the review.

So whom do you trust? Here are three pointers on what I think constitutes a trustworthy review site:

Not all the reviews on the site are favorable, and some are downright nasty. This is a good indication that the writers are not being paid by the producers to write the reviews. Consumer Reports is very trustworthy in this regard; they do a lot of research and will tell you if they find flaws. There are two problems with Consumer Reports: You have to pay for the service (which is kind of OK because it is a good service) and consumers themselves don't really get much of a chance to weigh in, which brings me to the second point.

The site is democratic in nature. I won't even look at a review site that doesn't allow users to comment on or submit reviews, and that goes for some very big sites. Why? Because many heads are better than one. User input allows the cream to rise. Amazon is wonderful in this regard. Consumers are able to review every product under the sun, respond to each other, rate each other's reviews, etc. The main problem with Amazon is that they are selling every item being reviewed, and I sometimes wonder if they don't cull a few poor reviews. I have yet to find one product on Amazon that was roundly panned. Another problem with Amazon is that it is a huge company with a board of directors, highly paid executives, and a billion-dollar brand to protect. The same goes for Google, Yahoo!, and a gaggle of other big players with decent consumer-driven review sites. Once the big money gets involved, though, It's not entirely democratic. Amazon is about the most trustworthy democratic review site out there, though, and it certainly is comprehensive, which brings me to my third point.

The site is not too "niche." This is a dead giveaway that someone is trying to game the search engines and make money. It puts the integrity of every review on the site in jeopardy in my opinion. I have no problem with people making a living by selling things on the Internet or starting sites that serve some narrow area of interest, but such a site is a -- for example -- beekeeping site, not a review site. If you want to open a beekeeping blog and inform readers about that realm, great! If you want to sell beekeeping products, great! Just don't dress it up as a place to get unbiased reviews.

If you look around the Internet, you won't find too many sites that meet all those criteria. Personally, I think it's wonderful to promote a product you genuinely love, but review sites should only promote those products that their users genuinely love, and not all products reviewed deserve promotion. It should also be a democratic affair where anyone can respond to a review that is overly promotional and say, "Hey! No way! I tried that product and it stinks. Here's why..."

By Richard Arnold

The growth of your collision center depends on your ability to gain new customers. Unfortunately, the scope of marketing efforts for many collision shops is to place an ad in the local yellow page phone book. Not that this practice is a bad one, but there is much more that shop management can do to drive more customers to the collision shop.

Do you have a marketing plan for your collision center? If not, you should. An effective marketing plan can bring more customers to your door. Through the process of developing and writing a marketing plan for your shop, you will conduct a competitive review and market analysis, review advertising and media options, and identify ways to build customer awareness as well as leverage referral business. And in today's world, the task of writing a marketing business plan is much easier than in days past. There are numerous tools and resources available to you through your paint jobber and other collision shop consultants to assist you in getting this important task completed.

Another important key to gaining new business is tracking and measuring current business through Customer Satisfaction Indexing (CSI). Most dealerships conduct CSI on new car sales and some do it with their service departments, but research shows very few perform this important business function at the shop level. As in other areas of a dealership, when properly done, a well-ran CSI program for the collision center will help turn customer feedback into useful marketing and management tools that insure long-term profitability. And remember, for greatest effectiveness, CSI should be done on a consistent and ongoing basis, and administered by a third party for the highest level of credibility. Keep this statistic in mind when considering implementing a shop CSI program: The average disgruntled customer tells 17 people about his experience. How many people will those people tell?

As Review Center, speaking of referrals use your satisfied customers to help spread your good name around. Start sending your customers a Thank You card for choosing your shop to bring their pride and joy back to pre-accident condition. And take it a step further by enclosing a small "pass along" card (printed on one side with your shop info) that your customer fills out with their name, address and contact info on the backside. The idea is to get your customer to "pass along" this referral card to a friend, family member or associate that we all know will likely be in an accident sometime soon - especially if they drive in any metropolitan area. Increase the "pass along" success rate with an incentive for the person who passes it along once a referral uses your shop. Reward them with a gift certificate to a restaurant, tickets to a movie, or maybe just cash. Get creative. Nothing beats word of mouth advertising.