The power of UGM now extends beyond the walled garden that most advertisers believe they can create. Entire sites are replete with UGM, and marketers have no control.
But you can, at least, do your due diligence and find out what consumers are saying about your brand before you start a new campaign. After all, you wouldn't invite people to a party if you thought they would trash your house.
Here are some sites worth checking:
Epinions has millions of searchable and browsable consumer reviews of products-- both positive and negative.
As its name suggests, Complaints.com focuses on the negative (some of the stories are harrowing).
Likewise, My3cents describes itself as a place where "Visitors come to learn, interact and voice opinions regarding companies, products and services in our open community." Much of the content is negative, but it's free to browse.
Don't forget the blogosphere
Aside from consumer portals, you can also see what bloggers are saying about your brand-- and the Jeff Jarvis/Dell story should convey how important doing this is.
Technorati and Ice Rocket are two blog-oriented search engines. PubSub allows you to subscribe to a free monitoring service that sends real-time alerts as new online content, much of it from blogs, gets posted.
And you can always simply run a query on your brand through your favorite search engine.
Next: Secrets to staying fireproof
