Conditions involving Convergence

User generated content (UGC) is not a new concept, but for digital marketers, UGC has never offered as many exciting possibilities for engaging with consumers and building brand loyalty.

With the recent billion dollar acquisitions of content companies like Instagram and Tumblr, tech giants are further demonstrating the immense value of content today,and the opportunities are apparent for marketers.

In a January 2013 Econsultancy/Adobe report on digital marketing trends, over 700 digital professionals identified content marketing as the single most significant trend in marketing today.

Content, in short, is king, so it’s incumbent upon brands to make good use of it.

With its many shapes and forms, identifying the right content to engage the customer and doing it at the right time on the right channel, requires strategic planning and resources.

One compelling solution is to allow consumers to create content for your brand. The rise of social media and mobile technology has made every consumer a potential broadcaster, and it is easier than ever for brands to solicit, collect, promote, and analyze content that comes directly from your customer base.

The OECD has defined three central schools for UGC:

Publication requirement: While UGC could be made by a user and never published online or elsewhere, we focus here on the work that is published in some context, be it on a publicly accessible website or on a page on a social networking site only accessible to a select group of people (e.g., fellow university students). This is a useful way to exclude email, two-way instant messages and the like.

Creative effort: of creative effort was put into creating the work or adapting existing works to construct a new one; i.e. users must add their own value to the work. UGC often also has a collaborative element to it, as is the case with websites which users can edit collaboratively. For example, merely copying a portion of a television show and posting it to an online video website (an activity frequently seen on the UGC sites) would not be considered UGC. If a user uploads his/her photographs, however, expresses his/her thoughts in a blog, or creates a new music video, this could be considered UGC. Yet the minimum amount of creative effort is hard to define and depends on the context.

Creation outside of professional routines and practices: User generated content is generally created outside of professional routines and practices. It often does not have an institutional or a commercial market context. In extreme cases, UGC may be produced by non-professionals without the expectation of profit or remuneration. Motivating factors include: connecting with peers, achieving a certain level of fame, notoriety, or prestige, and the desire to express oneself.