I was sent a wonderful link today for WindexShine.com. SC Johnson is about to learn a painful lesson about user generated content. On paper, UGC sounds like a great idea- let your customers build your site content for you and you can save money and possibly ride a wave of viral traffic.

What the good folks of SC Johnson apparently did not take into account is that when the public is allowed to write your page content, it’s THE PUBLIC WRITING YOUR PAGE CONTENT!

UGC and the hopes of a campaign going viral seem to often put stars in the eyes of eager young marketers. The problem occurs when the campaign is ill planned to prevent abuse of the system. If you’re “a family company”, it may well be worth it to have your staff manually reviewing and approving content before it goes live.

UGC is a double edged sword, and this is one message you probably don’t want going viral.