You may talk, but will I listen?

According to ReadWriteWeb, Jupiter Research has released a report looking at how corporations monitor User Generated Content (UGC) of relevance to them. Or put another way: How they keep up with the online conversations regarding their products.

Surprise! They don’t. Not really anyway. And you have to sit down and wonder why that is.

To start with ReadWriteWeb quotes some statistics from the report:

…only 29% of marketers using these techniques are monitoring the online discussions about their products on an ongoing basis and a shocking 17% don’t monitor online discussions at all.

Ouch! So what do companies do instead? They produce endless snippets of more or less funny content in the hope that it will go viral. The problem is that very little of this adds any value to anything beyond a few laughs. But hey! Why bother? As long as it goes viral, right?

If that is the rationale, I can understand why brands won’t listen in on the conversations. Because its hollow and empty.

So why not try to fix this? Why not skip the ‘viral-for-the-sake-of-viral’ part and focus on something of value that goes viral because its good, meaningful and relevant - and supported by a great real product?

If that was the case, I bet the conversations resulting from this would be much more interesting. And companies would die to listen in on them and participate themselves. There would be talk, and there would be listening. And - all things equal - everything would be good again.

Vad NU! is a consultancy company owned by Mads Kristensen and specialized in helping clients take advantage of the business opportunities created by new media. Click to learn how I can help you and your company.