As I was on the train home from work last night, there were a couple of guys sitting across from me. My iPod was out of charge and I started listening in to what they were saying. There are only so many times you can read the Metro, right? Anyway, it turns out that they’d both recently bought flat screen televisions and were comparing experiences. This got me to thinking. How do we harness this power for a website? How do we allow our customers and clients to listen in on their virtual commute, and how do we use that to promote a product or boost a site’s search engine rankings?
The answer, as you’ll have likely guessed by now, is User Generated Content (UGC). There seems, sometimes, that there is a slight reticence to add reviews and ratings to a site; after all, the argument goes, isn’t it a risk? Surely you don’t want your brand tarnished by negative feedback? The fact is, though, that once you become in any way popular, people are going to talk about you on the internet (this, I believe, is one of the first non-NSFW rules of the internet; I’ll leave you to investigate the rest on your own time). If all this content is going to be out there, then, why not use it to your own advantage? Why should it only be Yelp that benefits from your hard work?
On the most basic of levels, adding user generated content is great for search engine optimisation, creating as it does a large amount of keyword rich, fresh content. SEO gold! Customers will be talking about your products, on your pages, using terms and words in an SEO beneficial context. It’s fair to say, search engine algorithms love this.
There are, of course, marketing benefits that go beyond this. Site conversion rates go up, customers are willing to pay more for your top rated products and are more satisfied with their experience. And as anyone knows, a happy customer is a loyal customer.
But what of the elephant in the room, the spectre of bad reviews, that looms like a poorly mixed metaphor over all of this? Well, for starters, it’s something of an unfounded fear; overwhelmingly, most word of mouth is positive, with around 80% of reviews rating four or five stars. Given a bad experience, people generally don’t want to waste more of their time going back to a site and complaining about it. Even those that do, however, can be useful. This is where monitoring comes in; a company that responds, publicly and swiftly, to a dissatisfied customer is a company that demonstrates that listens and is able to understand and react. For this same reason, it’s worth checking what people are writing about your offering on blogs and review sites, as well. Obviously, it’s easier on your own site – another reason for hosting user feedback.
In conclusion, then, there’s nothing to fear and everything to gain from embracing the power of the recommendation. User generated content is as old as mankind (facebook is clearly Cave Painting 2.0), so it’s time to get a jump on your competitors and reap the benefits.
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