Cultivate

Encourage users to post content on major social media networks.

Initiate

Attract customer-created content through contests or simple requests.

Dominate

Leverage user-generated content to build credibility for your brand.

More >

More >

More >

Inspire Customers to Contribute Marketing Content with UGC

Marketing’s a tough job. Why not galvanize your customers to offer UGC (user-generated content) and make your brand even more authentic? Readiness to do so abounds; Hubspot reported 64 percent of Millennials and 53 percent of Boomers seek additional ways to wax poetic about brands. Using UGC where folks see it while shopping can boost conversions 4.6 to 9.6 percent. Here are four sure-fire ways to proceed.

SOCIAL MEDIA AND CONTESTS ARE GREAT PLACES TO GENERATE UGC

Harvesting social media input from social networks such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn and YouTube represents a first simple way to cultivate user-generated content. When you interact with customers on their favorite social media network, it also strengthens your relationship and encourages them to tout your brands even more. This authentic content can be easily grouped by use of hashtags, and later embedded in your website. Initiating contests or simply asking users to provide content serves as a second reliable means of UGC cultivation. Travel platform Trivago used a contest to generate priceless customer-generated content. First prize: an economical $500 for the winner.

We show user-generated content adds validity to your brand, quickly and memorably. It also adds a valuable perspective to your marketing program’s credibility.

User-generated content represents one of the finest ways of boosting your brand’s authenticity, and giving your customers a sense their views are important to you.

Read Content Marketing Strategies: Marketing Strategies for Business Growth, by Matthew Roy.

Customers respond to incentive offers. Therefore, incentivize your customers to deliver UGC by providing small perks in reward for sharing. The incentive might be a discount coupon for their next purchase. Or it might be including their name and observations in your newsletter’s next edition.

Email or call us at 708-246-4211 to master and profit from four sure-fire ways to cultivate user-generated content.

CONSIDER WIDELY VARYING FORMS OF UGC

Want to cultivate all kinds of content? Try varying approaches to rouse your customer base to expression. For instance, having your public relations or social media agency interview your customer and create long-form blogs referencing your brand represents a third foolproof way to cultivate UGC. These blogs deliver details on your product or service photos can’t convey. A fourth way to cultivate UGC: User-generated video content on your site or social media can wonderfully augment company-shot videos.

In addition to these four sure-fire ways to cultivate user-generated content, here are several other helpful best practices in cultivating and fully leveraging the amazing power of UGC.

• Requesting product or service reviews serves as a way of stimulating user-generated content on major social media networks. In addition, such apps as Demandforce and Grapevine let you easily add a review component to your website.
• The types of contests you run are limited only by your own imagination. Popular approaches to such competitions include asking contestants to provide captions for photos, or requesting they pen essays in support of your product.
• User-generated images offer robust brand reinforcement, and user-generated video takes it one step further. Hearing users’ voices, watching facial expressions and noticing body language all make user-generated video content more memorable.