Marketing with user-generated content

McKinsey talks about the marketing activities that can benefit from user generated content in a recent McKinsey Quarterly article. They talk about public relations, advertising, product development/innovation and customer service outlining how user generated content can impact each of these areas. I couldn't agree more though I just wish they'd get into more detail.



We all know that social media is having a transformative impact on marketing but so far there's little talk about how exactly. Only time will tell whether there is more hype than is warranted. However, the article made an important point regarding experimentation and focus -

In our experience, however, marketers who let a thousand flowers bloom risk losing focus—for instance, by failing to recognize the areas where user-generated media could make the biggest difference or by stumbling into the public-relations problems that intense customer involvement sometimes creates. One way of enhancing focus is to take a top-down approach, starting with drawing a conceptual map that links a company’s brand, industry, and customer characteristics with its core marketing activities that could benefit from user-generated media.

Everything must still start with the business objectives. And you still need to frame all your social media activities through the lens of your brand. While a lot of industry pundits encourage lots of experimentation, I believe that a more strategic approach (similar to what McKinsey hints at in the extract above) is really required.