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Graeme Foux, creator of the first multi-brand corporate blog, sets out a guide to consumer-generated media explaining why it could work for all companies
These days, anyone can be a publisher. The online world allows you to reach thousands or even millions of people. You can make use of tools such as online forums and message boards, newsgroups, reviews and feedback sites and blogs. The content can be text, pictures and even video or sound clips.
Consumer-generated media (CGM) includes comments, opinions, experiences and complaints published on the web by consumers. CGM is an important phenomenon that marketers need to appreciate and understand for a number of reasons.
First, there is an amazing volume of consumer-generated content: there are more than 30 million blogs monitored by search engine Technorati as of March 2006.
Second, access to this content is open to anyone, almost anywhere in the world. One person can reach - and potentially influence - a million others within minutes. Third, CGM is perceived by consumers as the most trusted source of information available. They are far more likely to trust an opinion posted online by one of their peers than a message from corporate communications.
CGM is easy and cheap to create, especially considering its impact. This effect touches many aspects of a company's marketing, from brand, through to customer support and customer insight.
Online customer experience
Pure play websites such as Amazon and eBay were the first to realise the potential of CGM, through ratings and reviews, and used it to enhance their customers' experience. Amazon continues to add new tools to its mix, such as 'author blogs' and 'ProductWiki', which allows consumers to create encyclopaedic, customisable information about any products on sale.
These services offer online customers a more interactive, richer shopping experience, thanks to content written by their peers. New players have joined in, such as Yub.com, whose main proposition is that customers can discuss brands in a social networking environment before making buying decisions.
These websites enjoy...