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Content is king, but can we trust it?

24Sep Posted by Maria Shopova

One piece of news caught my attention last week. The BBC reported that the number of complaints in the UK made to the General Medical Council about doctors has risen 23% in the past year, followed by a quick clarification by the regulator that there was no evidence to suggest care was getting worse. Instead, it claimed “the rise was down to greater expectations and willingness to complain”.

While I am interested in the debate about the quality of medical services provided in the UK, what sparked my thinking when I read the story was the underlying notion that people are more likely to proactively share their opinion of a company, service or product than ever before.

This is not surprising, of course. With the rise of social media, we can easily praise or complain about anything instantly, which in turn, has increased the likelihood of us doing so. Apart from creating “content” through sharing our point of view online, we are also more likely to share the opinion of others with our network groups.

For example, research by the Pew Research Center shows that 46% of adult internet users post content in the form of photos or videos online, while 41% are likely to repost on sites designed for sharing. The research further found out that 66% of online adults use Facebook, 20% use LinkedIn and 16% use Twitter.

These numbers constitute a lot of “content” creation and sharing. Therefore, it’s no surprise that companies and governments are now looking for ways to put that unstructured “content” or data into good use. A US publication, the Atlantic Cities, recently reported on an index developed by IBM that can track social sentiment on various issues by aggregating public opinion through tracking the “content” we create and share on social media channels.

The benefits of using sophisticated tools such as this for social media analysis in order to respond adequately to the public’s concerns are numerous. However, as touched on in the article, the surge of content creation can create both opportunities and challenges.

One important issue, in my opinion, could be determining the actual quality and relevance of the “content” that is being created or tracked. For example, in the business world, a customer can have a legitimate complaint about a product or a service, but they can also have a bad day or ulterior motives for making a negative remark online. Additionally, from a completely practical point of view, aggregating public opinion for the sake of it might not be as effective as focusing on the most influential “content” creators within a given network. Therefore, knowing how to manage the vast amounts of “content” and being able to distinguish between useful and irrelevant bits, in my mind, will be the single biggest challenge for companies and governments in the years to come.

Of course, with a complex challenge like this, there isn’t a single solution. Perhaps, the IBM software solution described above could be one. At the same time, other service providers, such as Klout and Salesforce Radian6, have started indexing and aiding organisations in engaging actively with word-of-mouth influencers. Yet others have started exploring the influence of social networks on public decision-making behaviours, such as voting, in order to be able to use “content” for predicting future trends.

The possible solutions are many and are works in progress. In the meantime, what we need to be aware of in the business world is that “content” is growing and it should never be taken as a given, but rather carefully evaluated for quality and relevancy.

Category

Digital

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Comments (3)

Sasha posted 24th September 2012
Brilliant article as usual! I believe that we see a rise in the sharing of opinions and the complaints in all sectors mainly because people are becoming more and more individualistic, hence more responsible and active in regards to their own so-to-say 'bubble'. Whereas in the past the social and political environment was forcing people to think of themselves as part of a bigger group with common goal, hence responsibility could be diffused (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_responsibility), nowadays with globalization and democracy (plus the underlying values of capitalism) , people are looking increasingly more after their own interests.
GShopov posted 24th September 2012
Great article which touches on a number of impotant topics for future discussion in the social media. To it I can only add that another massive challenge for the interested parties in terms of "content" (i.e. companies, governments) will be skewness of opinion. People now more than ever have the means to express their opinion on various online "vehicles". However this does not change/solve one of the most important and long outstanding issues of the "opinion sharing", which is the negative skewness created in the process. (i.e. we are always more inclined in sharing our negative, rather than our positive experiences). Companies, governments and other parties may choose to put some form of "management" on various content they might have access to amend (I am not saying this is the case, but rather exploring one of the possibilities available), but then again we run into the initial question of trust in the content we see.
Maria Shopova posted 24th September 2012
Agree with both. The question of trust in the content we see and share will definitely continue to grow in importance.

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