The Growing Use of User-Generated Content:
Untapped Resources FREE!
Wow, things have really changed in a few short years. The first incarnation of the web was fun for a while but those static images and lack of interactivity was way too passive to keep the attention of surfers who can assess the “funness” of a site by its type face.
The second incarnation of the web, dubbed Web 2.0 ‘cause it sounds cool, is more mobile, more interactive, more current (with ASP homepage updates throughout the day) and much more engaging.
And you can become famous in like 12 seconds today. Upload a hilarious vid-clip to You Tube and see yourself on national news the next day. It happens all the time. The little guy – even the idiot with a web cam who spews racist hate during his Monday night rants has an audience. It may only be a couple living in a hut but that skinhead whack has access to the world and the world has access to him.
So, how do you take advantage of user-generated content? It’s amazing just how easy it is.
Ask an Expert
An online company that sells drug-testing kits to businesses and families asked a local drug counselor to talk to parents about how to detect illicit drug use in teens early enough to intervene.
The result? An excellent, “how-to” guide written by the counselor and edited and proofed by the site owner’s wife. Solid, grade A content. Free. Oh, and the drug counselor was written up in the local newspaper for his online work and now has a slate of speaking engagements in local area schools. His “parents’ guide” gave him the creds to be labeled an expert. A life-altering experience.
Everybody likes to talk about themselves and their work. Place a few telephone calls to experts in your field and conduct telephone interviews. Before you start the interview, ask these three questions:
Can I tape record this interview (I have a terrible memory)?
Can I quote you by name?
Can readers or viewers reach you by email, phone or some other means? (If so, you’ve provided a service to some of your site visitors who will contact the expert for a consultation, examination, session, etc.) Don’t be surprised if many experts deny this request out of fear that they’ll be bombarded with requests for free advice or overwhelmed with email spam. They won’t be.
Provide an Outlet
Just as graffiti artists love to “tag” their marks all over the city, people want recognition. They want to be heard. And, if you provide them with the means to express themselves, many will – everybody from a PhD on the subject to some lunkhead who keeps a real UFO in his barn.
The easiest way to provide an outlet is an open blog where anyone can make a post and anyone can respond. If your forum or blog or chatroom is active (you hope it is), you may have to monitor it to keep out the riff-raff and loons but a good dialog between two or more experts is engaging to those interested in the topic, whether it’s skiing or the future of bubble computer memory. You pick the topic and others will fill in the blanks and keep your site active and exciting.
Ask the World What It Thinks?
Blog other sites and syndicate your content through sites like ezine.com to encourage others to visit your blog to learn, discuss or just rant and rave (they’re the fun ones). The wider you advertise your blog, the more bloggers you’re going to get.
Get Free Content from the Web
Let’s say you maintain a family wellness site. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a free, “How to Make a Fruit Smoothie” video right on the home page? Easy.
The HTML code for any video is right there on the same page as the video itself.. Simply copy and paste the HTML snippet into place (or have your computer person do it) and you’ve got free, user-generated video on your site – free. And all you have to do is provide a backlink to You Tube in exchange for the use of the clip. Not a bad deal when you’re trying to populate a site with good, useful content on the cheap.
You name it and someone has made a video clip of it. How to fix a leaky pipe? Done. How to fix a squeaky floor? You have your choice of three videos – all well done, all free.
Then, of course, for written content, use sites like ezine.com and goarticles.com for text on any topic. Again, the only stipulation is you must provide a link to the author’s site. No big deal considering you get good copy for zip.
Vanity Sites
Poets, photographers, artists, “performance artists,” mimes and other talented individuals sometimes create personal sites, sometimes called vanity sites, to showcase their work to the world and maybe generate a little site traffic or even land a gig or a commission.
Many of these artists will be happy to have you display their work on your site. That’s viral marketing and that’s why they built the site in the first place.
Some of these sites are less artsy. There are free webinars on buying foreclosures or investing in the cash flow industry, buying a car without being taken to the cleaners or how to select a college for your child produced and maintained by a college counselor six states to the east.
Contact the maker of the video and obtain one-time serial rights – the right to display the webinar on your site for a certain amount of time, sometimes for a small (very small) fee. Don’t forget, the college counselor is getting a little viral exposure via your website so you shouldn’t have to pay anything at all for the use of the clip for a month. If you do, it’ll be a lot less then it would cost you to create that same content, so paying a small fee is not completely out of order.
Other Sources
Other bloggers. Smart bloggers swap content all the time. Just make sure you do some fact checking to make sure the content is reliable.
The Open Directory Project (www.dmoz.org) has an array of content from free games and horoscope generators to detailed academic analyses of neuro-linquistic programming as it relates to behavioral cognitive therapies. (Sounds like a grabber, eh? But it’s appropriate for a website that teaches people relaxation techniques so some site owner is going to grab it and post it, meeting all of the author’s conditions.)
RSS (remote site syndication) feeds deliver up-to-date news throughout the day. You determine the range and scope of content by aggregating (collecting) feeds from other sites of interest to your readership.
Freelance writer sites like Guru and Elance offer another low-cost alternative. You can contract with a professional writer to deliver low-cost, “user-generated” blog entries to pepper your blog and generate a little buzz.
The web is loaded with content and, online, content is valuable. You can develop your own, employ user-generated content to make your job easier or put into place a combination of proprietary and user-generated content.
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