Blueprints / Getting Started
The Five Fingers of Death Part 3: User Generated Content
- 4th November
- John Lawson 10
In the next chapter of “The Fiver Fingers of Death”, John Lawson of ColderICE discusses why retailers should encourage user generated content – both the good and the bad.
By now, you should have a good understanding of what the first two fingers of death entail – sales and customer relationship management. So with that in mind, we will move on to user generated content (UGC) and why retailers should embrace both positive and negative UGC.
User Generated Content
Retailers need to embrace UGC because your end user is actually saying something about your product and you want to know what they are saying and in what context they are saying it. You want to know if it is positive or negative because both positive and negative comments are valuable. Possibly the negative comment might actually be more valuable than the positive one, because that’s an area you can affect, and an opportunity for improvement.
UGC isn’t just limited to feedback in a text format or layout. It can include reviews, kudos and photos, while providing a free and ongoing focus group for your business.
If someone is always telling you, “You are doing a great job! You are doing a great job! You are doing a great job!”, it will often not really motivate you to do a better job, nor does it offer constructive criticism. But if someone tells you, “You are lagging in this area”, then you have an area to focus on to make your business better. So UGC has to be embraced and acted upon – not ignored or shut down.
I think that the most effective UGC tools are still forums. People love to talk inside of forums and some very detailed conversations happen there. Also, of course, Facebook and Twitter are some broad-match areas where conversations can be taking place. No one can actually tell you where the conversations are.
However the BEST tool for UGC is your email inbox! You want opinions? ASK your customers for them!
