Why you need user-generated content

Many times you may feel that you want complete control over the content of your site, and in some instances this is totally appropriate. Controversial sales pages come to mind. However, in most cases, user-generated content can be beneficial in a variety of ways. We’ll go into the advantages below:



More activity With user generated content, there is more activity on your site. Frequent updates lead to visitors constantly coming back for more.
Builds community A community builds a loyal user base which is fantastic as a long term site strategy.
Less work User-generated content means less work for you, the webmaster or publisher. With visitors contributing their own thoughts and ideas, this frees you up to focus on marketing and promotion.
Fresh perspectives If you’re running a blog, comment gives readers the ability to disagree or add points that you may have missed in the post. This allows for a big picture outlook and a more comprehensive site or blog.
SEO value for content and misspellings With user-generated content comes different styles of writing (including misspellings) which are great from an SEO perspective. This is an effective and safe method to help your site rank for keywords that you may not have been able to rank for if user-generated content did not exist.
Feedback for improvement Finally, user-generated content also allows for collaborative feedback from visitors of your site. This will help you to see what’s working and what’s not and to improve your site by increasing traffic and revenue.


by Thierry CELLERIN, specialist in buzz marketing