What is User-generated content?
One way to achieve an effective branding strategy is through user-generated content. Every brand small or big has loyal and happy customers which help to spread or make prospective customers fall in love with the brand through the word of mouth.
Talking about the user-generated content definition, In content marketing, user-generated content is one of the genuine, effective and cheapest forms marketers use to increase brand visibility. The truth is – people love talking about products that reflect their ideal lifestyle through social media channels.
Content created by happy and loyal customers – in a way helps not only to keep customers coming back, but it also shows potential customers that your brand has a strong fan base. Knowing how to leverage user-generated content is what this post will help you accomplish and more so other things you would want to know about user-generated content.
What is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content (UGC) in other words can be called word-of-mouth marketing. It refers to any reviews, photos, videos, infographics, text, audios, animations that customers create and circulate on either their own social media channels or the channels or website of the brand owner.
Genuine UGC mostly comes from happy or loyal customers who have used your product and are in love with it and give positive feedback about the products or your brand.
UGC is the best form of content marketing in that content created by users of your product or brand followers can be used to establish a connection, deepen engagement and interact with prospective customers.
Most times marketers take user-generated content to be influential marketing, though both seem to be similar but different. Influential marketing is partnering with social influencers or any individual to create a marketing campaign. In UGC customers create content with or without incentives. They are not co-marketers. They do create their own content about your brand out of love.
Marketing Benefits of UGC | User-generated content examples
There are lots of benefits that come from leveraging UGC for marketing. In all other forms of content marketing, UGC is the most beneficial and result-driven.
Cheap – compared to creating fresh content for your marketing, it cost less to repost user-generated content.
Reliable – according to research 50% of the millennials trust UGC more than content from the brand owners itself. Added to the fact that customers take UGC to be more genuine and authentic seeing it’s originated from users of the products or brand followers and not from the brand itself. Trust is a major factor in building customer relationship
Connection – whenever potential customers come in contact with content with a level of trust and authenticity they connect more with it.
So UGC not only fosters brand loyalty, it goes deeper to engaging prospective customers. By statistics reposting a UGC on Instagram have chances of 690% higher engagement compared to other forms of content.
More so, whenever a brand reposts a UGC content of their customer. It shows the customer that he/she is valued thereby turning them into brand fanatics.
Reach – it’s very simple, the more people talk about your brand, the wider your reach. More so, there is no better form of brand reach than reach has gotten naturally and effortlessly, in that customers are the ones promoting your brand to their friends.
Conversion – when you are trusted by an audience, engagement becomes natural which makes your brand memorable. In turn, people are more likely to buy from a brand they easily relate. Research shows that 84% of millennials are compelled to buy because of UGC. Also, 68% of millennials claim the UGC is a good indicator of quality.
Effective marking through User-generated Content
We did already said before that UGC is a cost-effective and result-driven content marketing strategy. The question is – how do you employ UGC to actually yield better marketing efforts.
Here are some quick tips to help you make better use of user-posted content:
Request for User-generate content
Boldly ask your customers for UGC. The reason, being that, if you are not a large brand like Nike or Apple you won’t get a lot of UGC from customers. So be bold to ask, customers who love your product will likely talk about it. Sometimes you might need to incentivize.
Repost UGC, alongside credit to the users
Let’s say you have asked and you received a handful of UGC about your business from customers. The first thing and to appreciate (give credit to the original poster or source of the UGC). Secondly, repost it and engage. The reason is that when customers see their content fostering engagement they will be happy to create more. Also, others will be encouraged to create their own UGC.
Create a Hashtag
To see all your UGC at a spot. You will need to create a hashtag. Branded Hashtag helps to easily navigate to recent UGC by simply searching for the Hashtag to display recent UGC.
Keep an eye on your tags
As you gain popularity, customers are likely going to tag your brand. To see your recent mentions from users on Instagram feed or story. Always check your tag and when you see who is talking about you don’t hesitate to report. That brings me to the next tip.
Be fast & smart
As more brands use Instagram and Facebook stories it becomes very much fast to get hidden as customers might not like to make your brand the talk of their whole day.
Stories last for just 24hours. This calls for speed and smartness. So you have got to be fast and smart in discovering stories about your brand and reposting it before it disappears.
Incentivize
We prefer to talk about this lastly because a lot of the time brands complain that they don’t get enough UGC or don’t get at all. Here is how to go about getting lots of UGC. We would first recommend you host a contest or a giveaway. You can inform your customers that each UGC created with your brand hashtag can get them a discount code or win a prize.
In sum
The more people talk about your brand or product. The wider your reach and the more likely you people are will buy from you. The truth is that UGC helps to build a strong fan base and if used well, it’s an effective content marketing strategy. More so, the best form of promotion. In turn, you would have saved time, cost and effort in building your brand.
It is the best form of customer’s leverage so far. Using what people are saying about your brand to reach more customers, foster better engagement and drive conversion.