User Generated Content: Weapon to Conquer the Market in 2022
Through micro-influencers, the advocacy of customers, or endorsements by celebrities worldwide, we have witnessed the increase of content created by users via social platforms. This isn’t a surprise!
93% of people who have used the service claimed to be affected by content created by users in their purchasing decisions based on the internet and in search results; however, with increasing competition and increasing difficulty and costly for brands to find the right target audience.
Simply by using user generated content in their advertising campaigns.
If you’re keen to find ways to make user generated content profitable by making it available for optimal use, take a look through this easy UGC Guide.
Table of Content
What is user-generated content?
In marketing, user generated content (also called UGC ) refers to any content about your brand written by a person who isn’t the official spokesperson for your company. It could be a Facebook update or review, podcast, video, or another kind. If it’s a product associated with your brand and no employee or partner wrote the content, it’s likely to be user generated.
Types of user generated content
User generated content is the current essential strategy for marketers on social media. It comes in various styles and formats to help determine the best option for your company’s needs.
- Images
- Videos
- Content from social media (e.g., Tweets about your company)
- Testimonials
- Review of the product
- Live streams
- Blog posts
- YouTube content
Why is user generated content so important for Brands
In addition to the brands themselves, the customers have a great deal of trust in them. Indeed, various studies have shown that more than 60% of customers trust comments and photographs taken by customers more than the ones posted by the manufacturer or seller itself. This is a strong argument for the value of content created by users, even more so for these companies and brands.
User generated content transforms a passionate and loyal consumer into an automatic advocate for brands to create engagements with different communities to support their products and services. The fundamental idea behind the user generated content concept is that enthusiastic customers or the partners of the brand can provide an authentic and reliable recommendation to other communities and customers to help make a purchase decision.
85 % of users are more influenced by UGC than the content produced by brands directly by Adweek
The above data already inspire companies to interact with their customers in a more interactive and personal way, leveraging this reliable content while customers look for their competitors’ suggestions.
In the age of social media, using content created by users is highly effective and cost-effective. In addition, it can increase your brand’s trustworthiness, increase the reach of your brand, increase trust among customers, and improve authenticity.
6 Key Benefits of User Generated Content
1. Get SEO Perks
There are many ways UGC can assist you in your SEO efforts.
Based on Kissmetrics’ research, “25% of search results for the World’s Top 20 largest brands are links to user generated content.” Reviews from satisfied customers could also boost the SEO score of your site.
If your visitors write articles on their blogs and backlinks to your site, it could also help improve your SEO rank. In addition, analyzing the most commonly used phrases and words your customers use can help enhance your research on keyword optimization.
2. User generated content puts your customers front and center
One of the most beneficial benefits of the content generated by users is a win-win-win for both you and your followers.
- If you decide to use the content they create for your marketing
- They are letting their voices speak for you.
- The marketing messages you receive come from individuals, not from brands.
- You’re not marketing to your target audience anymore. Instead, you’re marketing to them.
- You can highlight the people who have shaped your image!
3. Gain Audience Insights
User-generated content can be an untapped goldmine of information. This is a benefit that’s frequently neglected. Examining the content of the people who share it can yield crucial insight. This will help you understand your target audience and what they are looking for in content. When you apply the principles in a data-driven strategy for marketing through content, this information can help you generate leads and boost sales.
The first thing to do is perform an audit of the content that your audience creates. Then, when they write reviews, take note of what your people are complaining about and then improve it.
There appears to be a common motif in the pictures the Twitter users are uploading? Are they in line with the way your brand or organization wants to portray itself?
When you launch a UGC campaign, be sure to match your target audience, channel, and format to ensure that your users are motivated to contribute.
For instance, B2B companies will probably come across the Twitter message board or suggestion box online to be much better over an Instagram photo contest.
One of the main advantages of content created by users is that it provides an excellent source of social evidence. Reading content written by actual customers boosts your credibility and puts your brand’s promises into focus.
As an example, Sydney’s Ovolo Hotel has undergone an upgrade in recent times to be “the ” world’s first Instagrammable hotel,” and guests were invited to take and share photos inside the hotel:
Brands are bound by certain promises to their clients or their followers. In the case of Ovolo, it’s they believe that the Sydney hotel is the perfect photo content for their social media platform. So the content created by users generated (i.e., all guests who posted gorgeous Instagram photos of their hotel) was proof on social media that they lived up to the promise they made to guests.
5. Find Unique Content
Your customers will create different content for the marketing department. Make the most of the “outsider” perspective. The videos, photos review, blog posts, and more give a new perspective and an alternative viewpoint. UGC makes content fresh and fresh and interesting.
Additionally, it encourages brand new viewers to join the fun and regular users to keep them active.
User generated content strategy
1. Be Strategic About Your UGC Platform
The initial step for any UGC strategy or campaign is to choose the platform you will use. You need to be an expert in your target audience in order to know the most appropriate place to look or inquire or create UGC.
Let’s concentrate on social media. It is possible to find six main social media platforms there, and each is distinct in terms of audience and expectations. Below are the general rules of Buffer for each. This will allow you to determine the right platform for your ideal client.
Facebook: videos and curated content
Instagram: High-resolution photos, quotes, stories
Twitter: news, blog posts, and GIFs
LinkedIn: Jobs, company news, and professional Content
Pinterest: Infographics and step-by-step photo guides
A single of the more significant features of social media is hashtags. But, it’s very easy to miss these hashtags. By branding your content using branding-driven messages as well as a playful and shared label, you’ll increase excitement while making your user-generated content easier to locate.
Hashtags can help your posts as well as your UGC campaign to be discovered. For example, if someone uploads an image or video or replies to one of your queries and uses your hashtag, their friends will be able to click that hashtag, and it will be shown to the rest of the submissions. In the same way, you’ve made use of UGC to introduce a brand new prospective customer to your brand.
3. Tell your audience what content you want
50% of all consumers wish that brands could tell them what kind of content to create and publish.
If you’re asking your audience members to participate in user-generated content, then how will they even be able to tell?
When you’re asking for photos or thoughts of customers, the advocates you choose to use need direction. Be clear about brand guidelines and guidelines for UGC.
There are many ways to stimulate UGC to to engage with UGC — hashtags for campaigns and social media contests. By using a single hashtag, you can generate a sense of urgency and encourage your audience to make content in your campaign’s spirit.
In terms of personal connections, today’s consumers prefer to trust individuals, not brands. This is particularly applicable to younger people.
The problem is that brands aren’t people.
If you are able to encourage your customers to post images of your products on social media, They can be the different faces of your brand. One method to attract them to sell your products is to show your personal characteristics.
Of course, there’s no requirement that every social media professional has to (or even) become a stand-up comedy performer. But it’s best to present an element of humanity to your brand’s voice and image while recognizing that the most human aspect could be derived from the people who purchase your product.
Example of user generated content
Dune London’s page of product information
While UGC can be utilized effectively throughout the entire customer journey, The place where it can have the greatest impact is on the product’s page. For example, the group at Dune London discovered that after introducing the possibility of shopping Instagram images to their website, they could show actual customers their merchandise in their clothes and accessories.
In particular, they discovered that when shoppers engaged with UGC, sales were up by 82 percent. Mark Blenkinsop, Digital Marketing Manager at Dune London, says that photos of people wearing Dune London’s merchandise give potential customers “extra confidence to purchase.”
Monsoon: Create UGC for shoppable
On its website and on social media, the fashion merchant Monsoon invites customers to post images of their products using hashtags such as the #MyMonsoon hashtag. #MyMonsoon.
The images are then incorporated into galleries on the site, allowing customers to browse the designs they see. When Monsoon used this UGC in its email marketing campaigns, the click-through rate grew by 14% and revenue increased by three percent.
The reason it works
This type of image allows consumers to visualize what the items will appear on them as they observe real people, not just models wearing the items and enjoying them.
Instead of just informing consumers, Monsoon empowers them to engage. Through the online UGC galleries, consumers can make purchases directly from the style they would like to replicate.
Warby-Parker’s #warbyhometryon
A few years back, the Warby-Parker began to allow customers to select five of their glasses to try at home. The pair they liked the most could be kept and paid for it online, and the rest could be returned via mail.
Before purchasing, however, Warby-Parker advises test wearers to share pictures of themselves on social media using their hashtag #warbyhometryon. At present, there are 20,446 Instagram posts of people looking for and offering tips on which Warby-Parker frames to select.
Doritos: Offer content creation tools
To keep users engaged with its brand, Doritos launched doritoslegionofthebold.com, a site where users can create branded images and videos that Doritos shares on its social media accounts.
The fans have come up with all kinds of food-related weather forecasts to photos of themselves reclining in Nacho chips. Doritos keeps its users through its public challenges, like their “oddly satisfying challenge,” which asks creators to create “hypnotizing” videos for a chance to be featured on the company’s Instagram Stories.
Like the one below, the fan-made content is viewed by thousands of comments and likes.
What is the reason it works?
The content in the campaign is hilarious and humorous, which is no surprise that it has generated lots of people to engage.
However, Doritos doesn’t just share photos of customers enjoying its products by launching the Legions of the Bold campaign. It’s driving customers to its site and providing the tools needed to create original content. Giving fans the chance to create their own work of art helps them feel more connected to the company.
In another way, it’s a typical UGC campaign.
Coca-Cola
Coca-Cola’s marketing department had the idea of launching the “Share a Coke” campaign on the ads and social channels. In the past few hours, it’s begun to receive a huge response from customers all over the world. The idea first came up in the Australian in 2011, when Coke decided to print approximately 150 most well-known and popular names on bottles, asking customers to share a drink with family members.
The campaign was rolled out on a rotating basis across different countries by the cultural traditions, customs, and backgrounds of those countries. The idea was received with open arms. People were quick to share photos of the bottles on social networks, and the “Share a Coke campaign quickly became a success. Not only in Australia but all over the world in more than 80 countries afterward.
Netflix
Inspired by the name of Netflix’s original show “Stranger Things,” they’ve decided to advertise their new series using some unique User Generated Content (UGC). Normally, to promote the show’s premieres, they will promote their fans’ posts by using hashtags that are typically the name or the name of the TV show.
In one campaign, Netflix used the title of ‘Stranger Things 2’ in the hashtag to announce the show’s upcoming second season. Because of this, the curious Instagram users were drawn back to the official page of Netflix to discover what the fuss was about. In awe of this concept, many people became enthralled and began sharing photos of random things from their day-to-day lives and hashtagging/tagging the name of the series. With these exclusive UGC that were shared across the world, Netflix generated almost 1 million viewers in just two weeks.
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