The Importance of Contents in Social Media

With the popularity of the internet access devices and the development of computer technology, it has entered the web2.0 era, a time for the social media. Nowadays, almost everyone uses social media, and it has become a part of our daily lives.

After the course of the last few weeks, I have learned a more precise definition of social media, which refers to the internet and mobile technology based channels of communication in which people share content with each other.

More importantly, I have begun to pay more attention to the UGC(User Generated Content) because of the course. After combining reasons given by Rosanna and my own summary, I think there are following reasons that make the UGC important.

First of all, base on the social attributes of social medias, the relationship between users can directly affect the user activity and user stickiness. The UGC just can show the relationship between users truly.

Then, UGC may play a decisive role on the user's purchasing behavior. When people make a decision on whether buy something or not, they will refer to the advice of others, and the advice impact will be greater if the advice from someone they knew.

Let us see a research from Dr. Kelly McGuire, SAS worldwide hotel software executive director, and Dr. Breffni Noone, assistant professor of University of Pennsylvania.

They surveyed the consumers purchasing behavior on booking hotel among the different prices, rating and UGC. According the results(in graph 1), they drew the conclusion that hotel reviews(UGC) are the most important indicators of the quality and value assessment for consumers. Consumer buying behavior seriously affected by the user comments. Hotel User Reviews (rather than consumer rating) is the biggest factor affecting hotel quality, value and ultimately purchasing behavior. Even though poor rating hotels reduce the prices, they can not create any added value.