Prime Advertising & Design Blog » User Generated Content: A Small Biz Angle

User Generated Content: A Small Biz Angle

It’s a wonderful thing, getting your site visitors and users to interact online and create content of value to your site. Some sites are built around this entire concept, providing an arena for users to speak out, share and interact with specific features. Sites like YouTube, MySpace and Corkd.

So how does a small business, with a service or product focus capture or lure user generated content (UGC)? Give your customers with passion an avenue to speak. In one way it is a testimonial, but combine a few other elements and it’s fun for them and credible for your potential clients. Here are two examples we worked into client sites.

Heritage Animal Hospital - My Pet
Heritage clients can post their pets photo and make comments from their pets perspective or their own. Pet owners are passionate about their animals personality, cuteness and health … so we gave them a place on the net to shout it out. One more reason Heritage is a great Maple Grove animal hospital.

Finnegan’s Irish Amber - My Finnegan’s
I’ve posted on Finnegan’s before. A non-profit beer company like this has customers for both their great tasting, locally brewed beer and their dedication to a better community and world. We pitched them on giving their dedicated following a way to share where they are drinking their socially conscious brew and they have responded. From Alabama to Minnesota, from newlyweds to hunters, you can see and read their passion for a great beer.

On a larger scale, but still a first time entry worth learning from into UGC, The New York Times (love their redesign this past year) will give it a shot, learn more from the blog post "New York Times forays into user-generated content" from The Editors Weblog and Beet.tv.

At Prime, we’re not done yet, we have a few other web design projects in the works at Prime to build upon UGC. If your company is interested in engaging your customers and site users, give us a holler.

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