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Home » Consumer-generated media

Consumer-generated media
The term consumer generated media is referred to the posts or comments made by customers and consumers through the Internet. Consumer generated media is also popularly known as CGM. Consumer generated media include wikis, blogs, discussion forum, internet platform and many others. The consumers express their views and gives comments about different products they have brought. It gives the shoppers insight about which product to buy and which are the products they should avoid. Shoppers who are planning to buy new electronics goods or any sort of product usually researches about different goods from different manufactures. They usually surf the internet to find out the opinion of other consumers. It gives then prior insight about the product and also helps them to choose products of different manufactures of the same category. Shoppers usually depend heavily on these consumer generated media when making a buying decision.
The word consumer generated media or CGM has evolved itself by not only including text but also incorporates audio, video and other multimedia posts. The posts made by the consumers can either express positive comments about a certain product. The consumers or customers can even give negative comments about a product they have used.

Pete Blackshaw, the CMO for Nielsen Buzzmetrics, coined the term Consumer generated media many years ago. He used this term to illustrate the evolving and developing consumer formed space on the internet. The idea of consumer generated media has its source from the online letters, emails and consumer feedback to include new age media like pictures, which include flickr.com, video like revver.com, sharkle.com, youtube.com. It also include social networking sites like capessa.com, a site sponsored by Proctor and Gamble which is related to women's health. He has also developed another new term known as Consumer Generated Media 2. This new term helps to describe online visual communication explosion and consumer fortified media or CFM. It helps to depict the use programs such as digg.com.

The primary theme of Jackie Huba and Ben McConnell's book, Citizen Marketers, is consumer generated media. The book highlights several examples where the consumer generated media becomes as powerful as corporate communication. One of the major examples included within the book is that of Jeff Jarvis. His informal blog campaign about “Dell Hell” generated lot of interest among the consumers. It influenced the consumers and customers. The independent iPod fan site like the TiVo Community Forum and iLounge are also included within the examples.

The various forms of Consumer generated media or CGM are message boards, third party websites, online forums, blogs, review and rating sites, clubs, online groups, direct company feed back and many others.

Consumer Generated Multimedia or CGM2 has also been introduced. Some major forms of CGM2 are personal videos, podcasting, photo sharing, tagging and moblogs.

You need to keep in mind that the consumers are becoming conscious about different products and the consumer generated media or CGM plays a vital role in forming the opinion of the consumers.

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