User generated content explained

There are a number of terms that you will come across when setting up your website and going deeper into the subject matter. Content or the content of your website is one of the pillars of your website that you can fall or stand with. There are different types of content and not every content has the same advantages and disadvantages. In this blog, we will look at what user generated content is and what are its advantages and disadvantages.

What is user-generated content?

User-generated content is content that is created by users of your website, mainly comments or messages under a post or page. Reviews that users can leave for products and services, as well as forums and other websites that work exclusively with user-generated content. Social media sites such as Facebook, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, and YouTube are all examples of this. Without users on these sites, they themselves have virtually nothing to offer.

While in the past many forums were still active, this is not always the case today as many of these forums have moved or slowly migrated to social media sites. Where the users are, the community often lives on. And anno 2022, this is more and more the case on the larger social media sites than smaller forums.

So user-generated content is content that is not created by you on the site, but by the users and visitors to the site. So this can take many different forms depending on what your website is about and how you design it.

Almost always moderate user-generated content

One guideline we like to point out is that user-generated content should almost always be reviewed before you post it online. Once you post comments, reviews, and other information online unchecked, it can hurt your website, your business, or your reputation. For example, a local church's website might be flooded with posts linking to a gambling website. Or worse, they may want to spread malware. It's up to you as a webmaster to counteract this and ensure that users can use your site safely.

So before you allow a comment, review or any other user-generated content to appear online on your website, make sure you do your research first. This is possible in almost all content management systems and can often be easily activated. You will then receive an email within WordPress, for example, as soon as a new comment is posted on your site, and with a few links you can quickly decide whether to approve the comment, move it directly to spam, or edit it.

Comments or posts with a link in them are a SPAM message 99.9% of the time. So you can also decide to move any comment that contains a link directly to the trash. The best way is to decide this by message as soon as you receive the notification. However, you can also schedule this into your weekly website hosting work. The more SPAM messages you see, the better you will be able to detect malicious comments. You can also install an additional plug-in for this, which will perform another check. However, your visitors' data will then also be shared with third parties, so you need to take this into account in your cookie statement/privacy policy, which should be on your website.

Old-fashioned guestbook on a website

You don't see a guestbook on the internet as much as you did in the early 2000s. A guestbook is increasingly being replaced by reviews and other formats. This is because it is often shorter and more user-friendly for the user. However, for anyone who has a website for renting out their apartment or vacation home, a guestbook is still useful. The experiences of previous renters can convince your future customers to stay in your vacation home as well.

Again, most content management systems provide you with a variety of options for this in the form of plug-ins, but you can also easily do this through third-party providers. Airbnb reviews, for example, can also be displayed on your own website.

WordPress comments - are they still useful?

Posts and interactions are increasingly shifting from the website itself to social media channels. Your WordPress comments can in reality only be used by spammers and bots to collect backlinks. Therefore, more and more webmasters are choosing to disable comments in WordPress altogether. It saves a lot of work, and there are many visitors who don't even look at them or bother to leave a comment.

So try it out for a year to see if this makes sense for your site and if it leads to positive interactions. If it's just negative comments or SPAM, it's often better to turn off comments on your WordPress blog altogether.

Do you use user-generated content on your website? Let us know on social media which form you use!