User Contributed Content: Great for Marketers and Publishers

Focusing on a subject and letting users contribute: a great formula for marketers (c) 2011

Does every company need a dynamic digital communication channel? Is a blog, wiki, Facebook page, or Twitter stream crucial for business success? For many businesses, the marketing manager's answer is “definitely, absolutely”. Yet, it seems like for many other businesses, it's not that certain. Before you jump into a knee jerk reaction, and blurt out an quick answer, look around and examine your position. Two indicators are useful in answering these questions. The first is a survey of executives, marketers, and business professionals. Ask people you know and dig a little deeper than just a yes or no answers. See if you can get a marketing manager to explain how they use digital communication channels. The second method to determine the potential of digital communication is a survey of company web sites, blogs, and other digital channels. In any product or service category, we find companies which use and benefit from digital communication. We also find companies with superior products and services which lag behind the use of digital communication. In some cases, we can actually estimate [guess] the affect of more invested digital communication, or true professional execution. Fortunately, some work is clearly useful as examples. In many examples we can see good ideas and good use of digital communication.

One way to gauge (and appreciate) the use of digital communication, is to look at results in a business. Since digital communication covers a wide range of formats and uses, I focus on content marketing and social networking. Content marketing refers to sites which communicate with a continuous stream of articles, pictures, or videos. The idea is to tell story after story in series of small installment a way newspapers, radio, or television channel communicate. This format of presentation is different than format which give static information a way a book, encyclopedia, or movie present information. Social networking communication does not focus on the information itself as it does on the connection between people, content, or subject matter. In social networking, the connections and relationships are the focus. This makes social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In, and even YouTube essentially sites which model clubs, interest groups, trade show, or even a professional talks. The two formats have the common attribute called “user contributed content”. User contributed content focuses on information and attributes (such as connection between friends) collected from users. This is in contrast with sites which a small number of writers, vidiographers, and editors contribute the content and many readers are passive. These sites can attract users quickly as Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook have done recently. User content sites are attractive to publishers and marketers. The attraction comes when a similar group of users reaches a momentum by itself and spreads its message virally. Viral growth of a site is essentially the holly grail of the internet marketer and publisher.

The usefulness to marketers and publishers in user contributed content sites comes from two key attribute. The first comes from simply the viral growth without the need to find the users. Essentially people who are interested in a similar product come on their own. By itself, this is a key feature for marketers. Another useful attribute is the interaction between people. Essentially, once a conversation is started, anyone can comment and contribute information. This is useful when a product usefulness is discussed and the comments essentially explain or praise the product. In complex products where users have invested interest in learning how to use a product and how to make a product useful, user contributed content sites are the most useful way to market. Software applications in graphics (Adobe's Photoshop http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop.html ), music editing programs (Steinberg's Cubase http://www.steinberg.net ), executive consulting (McKinsey http://www.mckinsey.com/ )and turbine engines (GE Aviation http://www.theskywardblog.com/ ) including hundreds of other products are now using a wide range of blogs. Some blogs look more like pretty press releases and white papers. Others are more interesting. We will look at a range of these to see what is being done and how the idea of user contributed content is seeping into the world of corporate (and less formal) marketing.