Social media is a phenomenon that has revolutionized the way we interact with each other and do business. Companies are using blogs and Twitter accounts each day that reach millions of people instead of a simple press release. Small firms are using the Facebook Fan Page as a way to advertise to customers in their area. Facebook has become such an “epidemic” that college students everywhere are seeing their GPA’s plummet right in front of their eyes. I may be on Facebook right now as I am writing this blog – doing “research” of course.

Companies have begun to realize the potential of social-media through the implementation of user-generated content. Businesses have learned that user-generated content creates greater customer engagement with the company and ultimately can lead to higher customer satisfaction. Companies can easily capture and display customer opinions and experiences on their website about products or uncover insights that make their business more effective. Insights gained from customers help these businesses understand how consumers buy, what they value most in a company or product, and how they can fulfill their customers’ needs. As one expert put it, it is the “first step to revolutionizing business through the voice of the customer.”

There are several ways companies can employ user-generated content. I was recently on Best Buy’s website reviewing a digital camera and came across several different kinds of customer-generated content. I was looking at the Canon PowerShot 12.1 Megapixel Digital Camera. Best Buy’s website allows customers to rate products on several different aspects: Value for Price, Picture Quality, Ease of Use, and Features – overall this camera received 4.6 stars out of 5. The website goes further by asking customers “What’s great about the product”, “What’s not so great”, and “Would [they] recommend this product to a friend?” This really gives customers the freedom to express how they feel about a product and where much of a company’s insights will come from. Just from reading a few posts, I noticed the one customer did not like the “noise” from the camera. Product developers could dig deeper into this insight to see if that means the noises are too loud or if the sound was unpleasant to hear. Finally, Best Buy allows the reader of the reviews to become involved by asking, “Was this review helpful?” as well as offering them the option to share the review through Facebook, Twitter, and other various social media outlets. Even these opportunities provided to the reviewer are creating user-generated content and giving insights for the company to use.

Google, being at the forefront of everything creative, now has applications where it can track trends of anything a person wants. So I decided, what company is more interesting to Google, than Google? Once I searched Google on the zeitgeist website, the first thing I noticed was the ‘Search Volume Index’, which correlates the amount of online searching about Google to the news or business strategies the company was making at the time. There is a huge spike in the data in 2008 that correlates to the announcement of Google Chrome and then again when the browser made news in 2009 that it would rival Windows. Another feature is that a user can compare several different components to each other. I added Apple to my trends analysis, where it compared Google and Apple, and there was a noticeable spike in 2009 when the iPhone 3G made news. Other features of the zeitgeist include that you can narrow down your search by years, regions, cities, and even languages. Under the “Trend for Websites” section, users can observe ‘Daily Unique Visitors’ over the last few years. With Apple’s website, the spikes again correspond to important business advances previously seen with the trend tracker such as the introduction of the iPhone. Only with this section, ‘Trend for Websites’ gives other visited websites. For example, with Apple, the first correlated website is iTunes, which makes perfect sense that people using Apple would also be using iTunes.

Social Media had truly changed the way people choose to interact with each other and the way companies do business. The next important step for companies though is learning how to harness all this data and apply it to benefit business.