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User-generated content (UGC), also known as consumer-generated media, is any content—blog posts, videos, news, images, wikis, reviews, music, tweets—created by end-users and published on the web. It’s the two-way dialogue all over the web today, in contrast to the one-way media distribution system of the pre-Web 2.0 era, when content was created and distributed exclusively by journalists, editors and those who held the web-publishing reins. UGC is the digital democracy.

For the purpose of this blog post, I’m going to categorize UGC into two types: UGC on your own website and UGC on the greater web, published in forums, review sites, social media sites and beyond.

UGC on Your Own Website: Asset or Liability?

UGC is a great way to open the lines of communication between your customers and your company. When customers are empowered to share their thoughts, experiences and opinions on your website, your employees can immediately respond to their concerns.

UGC is a cost-effective market research tool that provides real-time data (good or bad). Furthermore, this free content boosts the SEO value of your website and therefore can increase traffic and potentially your bottom line.

Build UGC in as a part of your content marketing plan, and be sure to allocate staff to monitor the comments made on your website. These editors should verify that the content is relevant, delete offensive language/images and spam, and be aware of copyright infringement laws. Be sure that those who publish on your website agree to guidelines that state (among other rules) the content they publish is original. Here are some other legal ramifications to be aware of before embarking on your UGC plan.

While there are a few precautions to take when implementing a UGC strategy on your own site, the risks are worth the potential benefits.

UGC in the WWW: Know What People Are Saying about Your Brand

Not only should you monitor the UGC on your own site, but you should also know what people are saying about your brand all over the web—which brings us to the other kind of UGC.

UGC in this sense is a bit trickier because you don’t have the ability to delete something when you don’t own the site on which it appears. It’s a free country, and people will express their First Amendment rights to say whatever they want, from what they had for breakfast to how poor your customer service is or how your product is an over-priced dud. The internet amplifies that voice on an unprecedented scale. But don’t despair. Whether positive, negative or somewhere in between, knowing what people are saying about your brand, service or products can empower you to change that sentiment if it’s negative or capitalize on it if it’s positive.

Here are a few UGC-monitoring pointers courtesy of SEMPO Institute:

1. Compile a list of keywords to monitor. Include company name, names of products/services and names of certain employees and management. Think of every keyword variation possible.
2. Create RSS feeds for branded terms on Icerocket, Technorati, Google News, Yahoo! News and Bing News.
3. Compile all of these feeds into one reader, like Google Reader (which I use and love).
4. Set up free Google and Yahoo! alerts so that you get regular email notifications when something featuring these keywords is published online.
5. Consider hiring social media monitoring companies like Cymfony or Crimson Hexagon. Crimson Hexagon’s Opinion Analysis Platform is a tool that monitors what people are saying about a brand, product, market or the competition so that businesses can distill meaning beyond just “positive/negative” and take the appropriate action. This data also helps prove the ROI of online marketing initiatives.

Responding to Negative UGC

The worst thing you can do about negative UGC is to take the ostrich approach. We all know about Motringate in 2008 and the subsequent Motrin boycott—the company got an “F” in Social Media Monitoring 101 first because of their failure to listen to their target audience before running an insensitive ad, and second because of their inability to reply to the backlash in a timely manner. Here are a few steps you can take to minimize damage to your brand image.

If the claims are false:

1. Contact the website and ask them to kindly retract the statements. Use supporting facts.
2. Read the website’s rules for UGC; sometimes users don’t follow them. For example, have you heard of JobVent.com, a site where current and past employees can review their company? Do you know what former employees are saying about your business? If “venters” mention names of management in a negative context, you can contact the site and ask them to remove the offensive posts per the website’s guidelines.
3. If you get no response from the website, add a comment stating your company’s position. Be sure to support it with evidence.
4. Be proactive and publish a response on your website.

If the claims are true:

1. Add a comment or post to explain your side of the story. Even better if you can get a manager or C-suite representative to make the comment themselves, adding another layer of credibility.
2. Clearly state how your company plans on responding to the issue and take action. Offer a contact email address and or/telephone number so that people can get in touch with an associate trained to respond to the issue.
3. If you’re really in a pickle, do like BP and hire a professional reputation management company to do the dirty work.

Do you have a story to share about allowing UGC on your own site, or brand monitoring on the web? What are some of the lessons you’ve learned?

Tags: blog, comments, content marketing, SEO, social media, UGC

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 at 3:35 pm and is filed under Quality Content, RSS, SEO, blog, keywords, managing media, marketing, pr in a crisis, social media. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.