Is your team looking into user-generated content (UGC) as part of its content? Let’s break down the undeniable reasons UGC needs to be on marketers’ minds, strategies to collaborate and other considerations.
WHY DOES USER-GENERATED CONTENT MATTER?
Let’s start with some stats about User-Generated Content too important to ignore.
- Consumers are 2.4x more likely to say UGC is more authentic than brand-created content.
- 79% of people say UGC highly impacts their purchasing decisions.
- 51% of consumers say they’d likely continue engaging with or purchasing from a brand if it shared their social post.
Brand authenticity has never been more vital than it is today.
Every trend out there is telling us that advertising and even influencer recommendations are becoming less influential. Yet marketing spending on these avenues is going up and up.
As marketers, we might think we’re in full control of our brand, but ultimately your brand is a perception held in people’s minds. Perception can have many inputs beyond a marketer’s control.
The most influential brands are the ones that have managed to build a tribe. Their customers, users and clients feel connected to one another. What follows is a passionate community of brand ambassadors singing the praises of that brand online.
User-Generated Content is the most authentic content marketers can get their hands on. It is word of mouth turned digital.
HOW DO YOU GENERATE USER-GENERATED CONTENT?
User-Generated Content isn’t content you make for your followers, rather it’s content your followers create about you. So the million-dollar question is, how do we create UGC?
Ask & You Shall Receive
There are two types of UGC, the kind you asked for and the kind you didn’t. Organic UGC, the kind you didn’t ask for, usually comes from both ends of the spectrum. The individuals who love everything you do and shout about it from the rooftops, and the disgruntled writing a 3-page essay titled ‘my 1-star Google review of this S*** company’.
As you can imagine, the cultivated UGC that you ask for encourages everyday users who might not have engaged otherwise.
When asking your customers or followers for UGC, you can be subtle and ask for things like reviews or be bold, asking for more of their time and creative input.
Give An Incentive
Money talks. It can feel insincere at first, but people respond to all kinds of incentives. What may have started as a financial incentive for UGC can evolve into something much larger!
Incentives can be more than cash, discounts or a sample of your product. Consider the driving forces within your audience, their hopes, aspirations, fears, desires and more.
What do they want? You might just stumble across something more valuable to your followers than money.
Popular ideas we’ve seen:
- Access to something exclusive
- Being featured on a companies website and social media
- Collaborate
Collaborating with influencers, other brands, and supporters who what to be your brand ambassadors is a superb way to get the UGC juices flowing!
You can collaborate with people in numerous ways. The most common are paying for sponsored posts, free products for reviews and account takeovers.
At the end of the day, your brand needs people who:
- WANT to collaborate
- ARE a good fit for the brand
- CAN articulate your messages
- FIND the relationship mutually beneficial
Bring It All Together With Competitions
Mytime brings brands, influencers, and the everyday user together to push one another’s creativity to new heights. We’re a social competitions platform that gives people the opportunity to interact with your brand like you’ve never seen before.
Inside you’ll find a user-friendly interface, transparent voting platform and powerful processor that’ll feed your marketing team endless UGC and marketing data.
The best part is there’s no marketing budget necessary. The only cost to your business is the prizes you provide in competitions.
T&Cs OF USER-GENERATED CONTENT
User-Generated Content presents unique problems between brands and creators. In this environment, it’s easy to create a culture of copyright infringement and objectionable content.
Businesses have faced copyright issues by sharing user-generated content from platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Just because someone has mentioned a company online doesn’t mean they have given explicit approval for that content to be used for marketing purposes.
Even people who willingly create content about a product may later have unease when seeing that material generate a profit.
No matter the platform or location, marketers need to be aware of any copyright, liabilities, and privacy issues that can arise with User-Generated content.
