Every day new studies and whitepapers are published that predict the further rise of user-generated-content (UGC). A key theme is that people are more likely to trust other consumers than marketers.

A recent example from Hotelmarketing.com:

Quite simply, people believe people who are like themselves. People want to hear the opinions and unbiased critiques of like-minded individuals (classic word of mouth). This is the trust component of the decision process being satisfied.

With social networks and consumer content being so readily accessible, satisfying trust is the new industry standard – not marketers spin. The implications of which are enormous now that over 60% of European online consumers take part in social computing activities such as blogging, reading and writing reviews, or taking part in social networking sites.

What most studies fail to mention is that in the world of UGC not all people are created equal. People are different and as a consequence content created by users varies greatly in quality and relevance. UGC has to be relevant and has to come from a trusted source in order to carry more weight than an expert opinion or even a marketing message. In the long run tools and filters will be needed to weed out bad and irrelevant UGC.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 12th, 2007 at 9:51 pm and is filed under Industry Observations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.