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I am sure you have heard of User-Generated Content (UGC). Is it a myth or is it something real– and how does it affect your work and your audiences?
Basically, UGC is content created by non-experts who may or may not be part of your audience. It’s a relatively new take on the content loop.
There are related UGC terms such as crowdsourcing, which is the use of everyday people (again, usually non-experts) who have the spare time to produce content, solve problems and, in some cases, even conduct organizational research and development.
eMarketer just released its latest figures which tells us that 82.5 million people created content in 2008. 15.4 million created user-generated video (such as YouTube videos), 71.3 million created content on social networks (such as posting photos, etc. on Facebook and the like), 21.2 million were blogging and another 11.6 million were active in virtual worlds such as Second Life. (Obviously, there’s some overlap in these numbers.) The point is a lot of people are currently doing it and even more will be doing it as eMarketer predicts that by 2013 more than 114 million people will be producing content in these areas.
So what does all this mean for you? Well, it’s worth a conversation. We could talk about the emerging link economy vs. the traditional content economy as well as other important areas including how to moderate and vet this content and the differences between engineered content vs. UGC. I’d like to discuss if you’re dealing with it now and if so, how.
For a free consultation on UGC please call our office at 626-799-1996 or email us at
info@pcs-strategies.com
Max Benavidez
President
Public Communications Strategies
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