As someone said, the media world is ‘customer-made’s’ coal mine canary. We are seeing a revolution in the world of user-generated content – Pinterest, Youtube etc.
Customers and clients are human beings and have the same afflictions as others. Somehow the business world does not think of them that way.
Citizen Journalism has also taken off and it should provide an inspiration to turn clients into ‘reporters’. People love to talk and write about their observations, findings and suggestions. If you think they only write negative reviews, think again. Customers enjoy writing more about enjoyable experiences – so, encourage them.
There is something called 1% rule (Internet culture).
It states ‘In Internet culture, the 1% rule is the rule of thumb pertaining to participation in an internet community, stating that only 1% of the users of a website actively create new content, while the other 99% of the participants only lurk.’
This presents a huge opportunity for businesses. Here’s what you can do:
- Create a ‘community’ for your clients.
- Jump-start the community by providing great content.
- Invite viewers and ‘lurkers’ initially.
- Establish systems to encourage conversion of lurkers into creators.
Your potential clients want peer and third party validation. This community becomes the ‘validation’ source for your potential clients.
The best part is, you are not paying marketing content writers, your own clients are writing for you and in the process they create a community of happy clients.