On March 7th, Mike Blumenthal, co-founder of GatherUp and Near Media, joined to discuss the changing review landscape. He discussed the latest Federal Trade Commission guidance and how best to work within this new review environment. Steve Hartman showed GatherUp product updates made following this updated guidance. Watch the webinar below.
Watch the March 2022 Webinar
March 2022 Webinar Agenda
Mike set the stage talking about the shifting review landscape (2:00) and the new guidance for businesses (3:00).
But what prompted this updated guidance? Blumenthal went into the ruling against online retailer Fashion Nova and the fallout from that decision (5:15) . Business are responsible to know the rules, and how their review management platform, if they’re using one, is operating (6:50).
Next, Mike went into details on how this new guidance should be handled by platforms, such as GatherUp, and agencies. (7:40) Blumenthal also went into the risks of violating this FTC guidance. (13:25)
The final topic of Mike’s presentation was living with these new changes (15:50). A large part of this discussion centered on the negative impact of review gating and review suppression. Businesses and agencies should be moderating their reviews, but also creating a terms of service or online review policy (20:10).
At the 25:00 mark, Steve Hartman, Product Marketing Manager, let attendees know about product changes GatherUp had made to address the FTC guidelines. The goal is to make sure the GatherUp platform is following best practices and helping our customers stay in compliance.
Finally, (31:30) Mike, Steve and Chris Walker answered a few questions from the audience.
Download the slides from this presentation here. GatherUp has also created a helpful user guide for moderating reviews and creating an online review policy.
The date for the next webinar has not yet been set, but look for an invite in the next few weeks.
