CardMarketing 2.0

Thursday, January 31, 2008

One of the key qualities of a web 2.0 marketing campaign is enabling consumers to participate by providing content of their own — letting them, in effect, become co-creators. This engages them, builds relationships and trust.

Card marketers should certainly be looking into online UGC (user-generated content) strategies, particularly for the youth market, as recent research by Pew Internet & American Life Project shows that more and more kids are creating content online. In fact, it's central to their lives.

The research, published in late December (and it's really worth a read), revealed that 64% of online teens aged 12–17 have participated in one or more of a wide range of content-creating activities on the internet, up from 57% of online teens in a similar survey at the end of 2004. Here are some of its most interesting — and relevant — findings:

39% of online teens share their own artistic creations online, such as artwork, photos, stories or videos, up from 33% in 2004
33% create or work on webpages or blogs for others, including those for groups they belong to, friends or school assignments, unchanged from 2004 (32%)
28% have created their own online journal or blog, up from 19% in 2004
27% maintain their own personal webpage, up from 22% in 2004
26% remix content they find online into their own creations, up from 19% in 2004
55% have created a profile on a social networking site such as Facebook or MySpace

So, kids love to create. The question, now, is how could you utilize UGC to engage the youth market? There's certainly not a better time to do it.

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