UGC - The Ring Of Confidence.

John Jantsch highlighted this interesting use of user-generated content to create DIY placards for a political campaign. Even more interesting to me was the questioning about loss of control that appeared in the comments.

You can control what you choose to say. You can control where and how you choose to say it. But you cannot control what individual people think. Even if the political campaign did not supply a voter with a placard to fill in, that voter would still be thinking about the candidate in exactly the same terms as they would have written on the placard.

So what are the ramifications of this "loss of control" (more accurately the risk that people might say bad things about your product, service or candidate)? Well, if people have justifiable criticisms, then you're getting great feedback which you better act upon and if people say something that's unjustified, then those who disagree with them will know that to be the case and will probably offer their counter-opinions just as vociferously.

If you're worried about loss of control, you're in denial about the reality of twenty-first century communications, human nature and decision-making. More alarmingly, you're actually worried that your product, service or candidate isn't very good and that nobody will sing your praises.