Trusting Web Content

So I read a great article recently in Newsweek about the next wave of User Generated Content…The gyst of the article was talking about how we are moving back in the direction of  “more trusted” content creation after a few years of widespread user generated content creation on the Web. 

I don’t think we are moving back to the days of Web 1.0 anytime soon (where we had editorial created by mostly professionals) but its interesting to think about the word “trusted” and how it applies to the future of reviews, ratings and information accessed on the Web.   

I like to think about the Web as one giant Reputation Management System.  A reputation management system we are integrating into our lives more and more every day.  We look to the web to give us a viewpoint on people, places, experiences, and products before we choose to spend our hard earned money or our precious time.  There is a lot of information out there now and it continues to grow from users at varying degrees of value and is providing a human’s opinion on just about everything.   

So how does all this content now become “more trusted” and give us an improved “reputation” snapshot.  I think the first thing that we have to do is talk about what “more trusted” means because I think we have two entities that need to see it that way.  The first entity is Google/other search engines and how they recognize your site as a source for search prioritization and the other is , of course, how consumers consume and use your service offering.   

With regards to Google I think there are a few rules that are increasing more and more in value to how the algorithm looks at you:

·        the first is how easily it reads the content off of your Web Page

·        the second is how unique/original that content on your site is

·        the third is how other valued Web sites feel about the content you have on your Web site. 

I am sure there are many more factors that google takes into account but let’s start with these.  A lot of the companies that have done well with Google have been the one’s that have created lots of unique focused content around a topic of interest to people.   

So now as turn to building consumer trust, let’s try to frame a few different Web Businesses and how they may convey trust to their consumers: 

·        The

Mahalo Way

– Focused well written editorial that is created internally and layed out in a very intuitive way around a subject with a layer of community that focus on topics that are tougher to justify and ROI on… This is a hybrid model where a lot of the central user experience engenders trust…      

·        The

Yelp Way

– Lots of User Generated Content from People who come to life in the Web experience and are expressed as true personalities… The trust is engendered when you can connect with people and what they write because of how transparent and real their identity is… 

·        The

Wize Way

– create content that starts with all of the collective opinion from the Web’s Best Sources that has been distilled down to an intuitive information summary. Create transparency on the breadth of coverage and the quality of the sources. Layer an expert community that manages and focuses on improving and owning things they feel passionate about to give it that human touch.

I am sure we will start seeing more user generated content business’ focus on how they convey they are a trusted source of content in the near term as more and more choices around User Generated Content become available….