The importance of user generated content for all brands

There was a time when brand and branded content was controlled solely by marketers and advertisers. These times are certainly gone. In the new era of social media, smartphones and user generated content, you no longer control what your brand content is about... your consumers do.

Although there have been many attempts, most brands are still quite reluctant to give up control. They feel nervous about the quality of the content, the messaging, the lack of control. Brand has always been quite a controlled topic where marketers and advertisers have always wanted to set the rules. Even in things that were more out of their control like PR, they created ways to try to limit risk and control outputs. But the age of democratized brands is now.


Look at the case of LinkedIn. It started as a social media network for recruitment but soon realized that they needed content to make it more powerful to connect. Initially, they developed the Influencer network, which was a great way to get high profile people to give points of view, but soon after they realized the potential of user generated content. Now, thousands of people are producing content related to professional topics, which makes the network more relevant and interesting for its audiences. It gives people the power to publish, promote their personal brands, and create topics that allow discussion. But at the end, the biggest winner of all is LinkedIn. We are all doing the work for them. They have thousands of professionals doing their best to look good, producing content which makes the LinkedIn platform richer and more interesting.

I don't think they deliberately decided to do this, but it was more like a great accidental idea as a result of the appetite of people wanting to write. The power lies in that all this people that write are now also sharing their posts on other social media networks, driving readers to LinkedIn, creating a massive amount of content that will over time become an amazing business content library, and all for free! LinkedIn is not paying any of us writing in here but is definitely benefiting from all the content produced and the traffic being driven.
In this same way, brands need to start thinking how they will allow their audiences to help build their branded content and their brand, giving them tools and freedom and understanding that even if you don't, they will create content about or related to your brand and share it online.

If you don't believe it, search on Twitter for "Get the London look" from Rimmel and see the consequences of a piece of branded content that has gone wrong when taken by users and turned into something else.