Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The Importance of User Generated Content



Great Lakes Beer Instagram contest

User generated content is a growing trend that is currently undervalued in many industries and it’s always interesting to see what large brands are making the most of UGC and how.

User generated content can be absolutely free, and equally as effective in promoting your brand, identifying or creating brand ambassadors as well as a helpful tool for listening in the spaces where your customers currently reside.

Paid media can be effective when done right, but UGC seems like a unique opportunity to reach customers in a different way without having to do anything. If you’ve got a great company, people of all ages, especially millennials, will share and create content about you that can come across as much more genuine than your expensive online advertisements can.

It’s important to leverage this content any way you can. How do you track and promote user generated content that’s relevant to your company? 

Monday, January 7, 2013

Online Reputation Management - Why It Matters



In this new social media/tech savvy age where customers and clients are beginning to take back the reigns and let brands know what THEY want, online reputation management is something that's becoming more important each day. Not only do brands need to pay attention to what's being said about their customers on twitter and Facebook, but they need to tune in to major review sites as well, because they're not going anywhere anytime soon.

Sites such as Yelp and Tripadvisor have continued their momentum as popular sites, and continue to garner new users and more reviews each day and their usage will only increase, not decrease. Although there's both positive and negative aspects to these types of sites, including reports of fake reviews, disgruntled employees or customers "retaliating" with slews of poor reviews, the majority of reviews on these sites are genuine... and people are reading them. It's no longer an option to stand by and allow customers to post on sites without taking into account what they're saying and without acknowledging the customers who leave them.

Online reputation management is a necessity from all corners.. from social media to online reviews, brands need to know what's being said about their companies because people aren't going to stop talking about you just because you ignore it. The Online Reputation Manager will soon be a valid and necessary position in many companies. Social media has helped make customers feel important again and it's changing the way business is done, especially with the younger generations.

Whether or not you like it, sites like Yelp are here to stay, which means customers posting positive and negative things about your brand, store, etc, is also here to stay. You can't hide from this anymore, might as well tackle this new development head on.