Advertising, PR and other marketing agencies not only have to contend with incorporating a new practice into their business model but they also have to keep up with a rapidly changing technology that requires capital-intensive investments. It makes sense to seek out partners, both marketing and technology, who are dedicated to infusing your initiative with both brand strategy, the latest technology, strongest available platform and technical expertise to safely navigate your brand through the World Wide Web.

Because social media provides marketers the unparalleled ability to let consumers engage and interact with their brands, working with partners to select the appropriate medium to engage consumers in conversation takes careful planning and strategy. Decisions about how to have conversations with your consumers, is key to creating forums for meaningful interaction and robust online communities. For some brands, a Flash driven rich-media site might work well while for others a more text-based site might be more appropriate. Whatever your social medium is, it should have features with high functionality and create addictive user experiences, with the ultimate goal of engaging and entertaining.

Agencies need tool kits to harness the power of social media. They should concentrate on taking their creative expertise and brand strategy know-how and applying it to the medium, and then focus their efforts on understanding the canvas that social media provides. Agencies can then direct their attention to the kinds of campaigns they can develop to engage and entertain their consumers. How should social media and the interactivity it brings help shape their creative process? It’s a new, great frontier, with cool, cutting-edge possibilities to break through the clutter, and allow their creative processes to be truly original.

The implementation – the technology work horse – needed to power the experience should be given to technology companies that agencies turn to as trusted vendors and strategic experts. The space is complicated and brands need resources whose sole purpose is to navigate complexities for them. Effective technology partnerships will bring the tools the agencies need to the table.

If you are serving a solution up to your client, make sure you consider the following checklist of critical factors:

• Brand Protection – Ensuring the brand can protect content being posted, guaranteeing that it lives up to your brand promise, that it is appropriate, and that it does not infringe on copyright issues.

• Content Ownership – Make sure the brand owns and can re-purpose the valuable consumer-generated assets being uploaded.

• Brand Experience – Be sure the solution is highly brand-able and emulates your brand down to the smallest detail, such as a rating icon.

• Viral Distribution – Ensure your consumers’ experiences can be easily shared and generate the maximum buzz for your brand, both organically and authentically.

• Metrics – Be sure you have powerful reporting tools to help your clients define their Key Performance Indicators (KPI), to not only define but also measure the success of this new medium.

• Rapid Deployment – Make sure you have a technology solution that is easily deployable. The creative process can lead to changes and last minute initiatives. Agencies should embrace a technology provider that has a platform to enable ease of upgrade of new features and functionality that will always bring the latest social features they can champion to their clients.

• System stability – Be sure your partner’s track record is solid. Nothing is worse than a site being slow or, worse yet, down due to surges in activity.

A platform-based technology company can ensure your social media program is able to be meet agencies’ unique demands. Providing solutions from a platform allows for quick execution and launch, in a matter of weeks not months. Also a platform-based approach allows for constant innovation – upgrading new functionality is easier as it is built upon and ever-evolving foundation. When working in partnership, future agency needs can shape the product’s roadmap of the platform’s design. Platforms are built for scale and can handle large levels of user-interactivity and have the technology backbone in place to ensure optimal performance.

Collaboration among agencies, technology companies, and the brands they represent is vital to the success of a social media initiative. Having a trusted strategic technology partner ensures that agencies have the back-end details covered, allowing them to concentrate on the creative content, together developing a successful new media program that has high traffic and, most importantly, an asset that accurately reflects their client.

Today, we know our customers are no longer happy simply being spoken to – they want to have a voice. If denied, they’ll easily find a brand, service or product that is more than happy to engage them in dialogue.

But how do you open up to their opinions and thoughts on your brand and still protect the brand’s integrity? And don’t forget that you have to do more than just listen. There needs to be authenticity in the experience.

A simple UGC video needs to be anchored to something larger to give it meaning and context. A video making the e-mail rounds or widowed on a video-sharing site doesn’t extend the dialogue to the benefit of either the consumer or the brand.

There needs to be a place where the brand and community can respond to one another and create an authentic experience that truly harnesses the power of social media through a two-way communication channel. As it happens, social media is uniquely adept at making this happen.

But, before you jump into the social media pool with both feet, I’d like to share three easy tips for companies looking to truly materialize the promise of user-generated content in creating an authentic dialogue and a worthwhile customer experience that furthers the consumer’s need to be heard and the brand’s desire for a deeper, more meaningful connection.

Tip One: Define Brand Safety and Establish Review and Approve Protocols

Brand safety is crucial for any organization engaging in UGC. With the amount of time and resources spent on building your brand, it is imperative that you take every precaution to protect its value. Your social media environment needs to emulate the brand and extend its value, not riddle it with offensive materials and copyrighted content. Many of the first UGC campaigns backfired because people took things to extremes and brand-damaging content was ultimately released to the masses … inadvertently at the behest of the brands themselves.

An open dialogue is the goal of tapping into user-generated content, but it cannot come at the price of your reputation. An important first question to consider is what is our threshold for content?

It is ultimately the brand’s responsibility to set the tone and take steps to ensure the rules of engagement are being met. Developing a system for content approval is a simple way to ensure that your site is providing an on-brand experience for your audience.

Can your site be reactive — allowing content to be posted unapproved with off-topic or damaging material removed after the fact, or is a more proactive stance required? Does legal need to review the materials to ensure copyrighted material isn’t being used? Have brand managers cleared content to ensure it is keeping with the spirit of the brand and the promotion? Is that everyone?

The goal here isn’t to bog things down with process and time delays but, instead, to create a streamlined process that allows the consumer an experience keeping with the brand’s promise. Over time your community will grow and thrive and become its own police force – telling you what they feel is “off-brand” by flagging inappropriate content. A powerful testament to how engaged people become when given an outlet.

Open dialogue and authenticity with the consumer is certainly the goal, but it is important to remember amidst the excitement of generating a buzz-worthy campaign that these things cannot happen at the price of your brand’s integrity. Determining what is appropriate and what is not after being faced with the latter peppered throughout your promotion may already have compromised the brand. It is the company’s job to set the tone and guidelines for what is appropriate and this has to happen before everything else.

Tip Two: Own Your Content, Shape the Experience and Engage with Everyone

As companies first experimented with user-generated content, it made perfect sense to use established online video sharing sites for their campaigns and promotions. The audience numbers are certainly there. But, unfortunately, with third-party sites you don’t own the very content you are inspiring brand advocates to create in your company’s name.

Today, thankfully, the tools, technologies and expertise exist for companies to host their own promotions, campaigns and communities while maintaining a high level of control over the brand experience. The problem: what is the point of spending resources to create a promotion if no one visits? It is, admittedly, a balancing act and experience shows the most successful campaigns use the best of both worlds: the virulence and audiences of third-party video sharing sites and social media outreach along with the safety and complete brand immersion of a company-authored site.

There is a great need to engage in Web 2.0 and create a seamless and “safe” experience that’s entertaining and participatory. One way we have discovered to get the most out of both is by incorporating a watermark on all approved videos or photos that are uploaded to the community. By placing a watermark of your brand innocuously in each video or photo, the material, wherever it ends up in its viral distribution lifecycle, is immediately recognized as an endorsed or approved consumer asset.

Clicking on the watermark brings the viewer back to the original community so they can fully engage and participate. From the brand’s perspective, you are essentially having your cake and eating it too. Through a powerful tool like watermarking, your campaign can move from one social network to another, live on third-party video or photo sharing sites, be emailed through anyone’s list of contacts and still retain the stamp of approval and an active link back to your brand’s site.

That way, you’ve truly capturing the best of both worlds without sacrificing brand safety or ease of distribution. The content is yours, approved, brand-safe and free to travel the entire Web to further endorse the product.

Tracking and analyzing the content is also a key ingredient to a successful initiative. Ensuring you have the means to not only syndicate, but track viral movement is critical when proving the true power of user-generated content for your brand.

Ask yourself why you are spending resources to drive people looking for an experience with your brand away from your site? With each person being pulled to your site through the watermark, your branded environment becomes that much richer — and your customers develop a library of resources for you to repurpose, catalogue and draw inspiration and meaningful data from.

The bottom line is this is your brand, your story and your customer. Why would you turn that over completely to another party when the technology and resources are out there for you to play both sides to your benefit?

1. People typically trust other people.

This seems like a simplistic declaration but it’s not something that every brand marketer takes into consideration when executing strategy, though they should. One of the most valuable elements social media provides is the true dimension. Compete, Inc. estimates that roughly $2 billion worth of consumer travel spending is influenced by these types of UGC. Why? Because it’s human nature to seek out the opinions of like-minded people.

Personally in the last three years I have travelled to Punta Mita and Akumal, Mexico and even to Positano, Italy solely because of a recommendation from a friend or colleague. I was clearly driven by their opinion and took action from their recommendations. Their opinion overwhelmingly motivated me to travel to these locations – much more so than any print ad I may have seen to visit Jamaica. 

A study by Compete, Inc. in late 2006 found that more than 65 percent of travelers were influenced by UGC in making a purchase (at an average of $500 per booking). Major comparison sites from Expedia to Travelocity prominently feature traveler reviews of hotels. Users comment on service, cleanliness, breadth of extra services, price, quality of rooms, amenities, and other aspects of their stay. If you’re looking for a great hotel in Houston and come across a two-star listing you might be keen to ignore it. However, if a friend raved about the hotel’s great home-cooked food and gracious service, you might opt to stay there regardless of room size or access to an Internet connection. User reviews help personalize what would otherwise be a brochure excerpt and a picture.

Additionally, hosting a social media community on your site is a great way to keep your customers connected with one another and with your latest offerings. A thriving social community is a willingly captive audience. Say the community centers on a love for Boston. You’re both providing and gleaning value by allowing your customers to write about their favorite trips, food and hotels; share pictures and videos with one another that you can showcase on your homepage; and create online destination guides. Plus, you know that this group will likely be more receptive to Red Sox tickets and gift certificates to the Union Oyster House than, say, your customers in Chicago.

2. Integrating traditional marketing with UGC helps you drive home brand messaging.

Part of helping your brand messaging stick in people’s minds is to offer them a distinct way to interact with your company in every aspect of their lives.

A fantastic example of this is a recent television spot by Hotels.com. The commercial shows a man being carried across a hotel lobby, into an elevator, and up to his floor by porters. The man asks if the porters are treating him so well because he booked his stay with Hotels.com and plans to write a review of his experience. The porters pause before saying “yes,” and continue to carry the man down the hallway. While Hotels.com didn’t need to explicitly mention their Web presence given that the company is an online entity, the commercial shows that marketers are taking notice of the impact that UGC is having on the travel industry in general and, specifically, on their brand messaging.

Even hotel stalwarts like Marriott and Holiday Inn direct people to access their website at the end of their commercials, though they don’t always mention it in the voice-over. It’s called a “marketing mix” for a reason – include references to UGC in all of your outreach endeavors.

3. Social media and UGC provide true authenticity.

The most promising element of social media is its innate ability to engage people on an emotional level. Online video is an especially effective method of communication because it incorporates multiple dimensions of sight, sound and motion and mirrors a one-to-one, personal conversation.

Will Richmond of Glucose Digital recently wrote an excellent article on the power of user-generated video as a vehicle to promote brands. Many advertisers solicit users for one-off contests or short campaigns, but the real value of user-generated video lies in creating a continual, educated dialogue. Richmond uses Amazon.com as an example; while the site encourages users to upload images of a particular product or service, they don’t yet offer a video platform for people to submit a more comprehensive review of their experience. Richmond hits the nail on the head when he states, “it seems like there should be a natural point of intersection if brands could incent their passionate customers to create videos which not only sang the praises of their favorite products but actually provided valuable information sought by other prospective customers.”

We worked with the Baltimore Area Conventions and Visitors Association, or BACVA, last year for a social media initiative. My company, Vitrue, helped BACVA create a site called “visitmybaltimore.com,” in which people could post videos of their favorite Baltimore hot spots, local restaurants could upload their promotions and tourists could navigate the site to hear firsthand accounts of what makes the city great. The site has a community of loyal fans with diverse ideas who connected with each other and with the city of Baltimore in the most authentic way possible – face-to-face.

Encouraging your users to upload video reviews and guides enables them to have a voice and share emotion that can be both seen and heard.

While creative benefits and special offers will keep attracting people to your site, incorporating social media into your marketing mix will ensure that your customers remain loyal. By stepping back and thinking honestly about what you’d want to share with others regarding your vacations and hotel stays, it’s easy to see that social media is the perfect vehicle for travel marketing. Never underestimate the power of consumer engagement – it can help you soar to uncharted heights.