What’s one of the best ways to generate product interest, trigger conversation, and increase revenue? User-generated content (UGC).
It’s a marketing goldmine, and knowing how to use it properly can create a snowball effect of higher engagement and more social media followers.
Why?
It’s simple. Consumers trust organic, user-generated content more than they trust traditional advertising. In other words, your audience would rather hear from your customers than you.
If you’re ready to learn everything you need to know to craft a winning UGC strategy that will explode your growth, engagement, and bottom line, let’s dive in.
Key Takeaways
- User-generated content is content published by users. It includes photos, reviews, videos, and blog posts.
- Give users fun content to respond to and ensure images you share are high-quality and original.
- UGC is cost-effective and saves your creative team time. It’s also more authentic, which can create loyalty.
- Launch contests, create shareable content, and email customers a few days after they’ve purchased to encourage user-generated content.
- Make the most of UGC by defining your goals, finding the best platforms for your brand/audience, actively promoting content, and tracking stats.
Table of Contents
- Key Takeaways
- What Is User-Generated Content?
- Types of User-Generated Content
- Benefits of User-Generated Content
- How to Get User-Generated Content
- Incorporate User-Generated Content into Your Marketing
- User-Generated Content Examples
- FAQs
- Conclusion
What Is User-Generated Content?
User-generated content (UGC) is content created by individuals rather than brands.
If you’ve ever gone to a cafe, snapped a picture of your latte art, uploaded it to your Instagram Stories, and tagged the coffee shop, you’ve created UGC. Take this example from a Starbucks customer posting on Instagram about their dog enjoying its first ‘Pupcup’:
Sushi_therottie28 promotes the brand to followers by including hashtags alongside the adorable picture. This is what UGC content is at its core.
The result? Powerful online social proof that has the potential to increase trust, authenticity, and sales.
Types of User-Generated Content
We covered what user-generated content is, but what about the different types, and how can you use them? We’ll discuss them in detail next.
1. Photos
Visual content is some of the most powerful UGC because it shows potential customers what they can expect from a product without physically inspecting it.
Think about the last time you looked for a hotel or a new pair of shoes. Did you check out UGC images from real customers? Chances are you have, just by looking at pictures from past customers.
Seeing these images gives people browsing an immersive experience and makes them feel more confident buying an item online.
Take this great example from the body-positive brand Aerie, which focuses on body inclusivity. The users send real life photos to the brand while wearing their products, which then get shared:
Rachel Clinger, Content Strategy Manager at NP Digital, adds:
“Give your users something fun to respond to as a prompt to get UGC as a start. Then, when deciding which content you want to share/highlight, take your time reviewing. Your top focuses are making sure that it was created by a human and is the quality content you want to share about your brand. This can include ensuring the images are high-quality and not grainy, as well as highlighting ones that show true enthusiasm in either an image or video.”
Then, share on visual platforms like Instagram and Pinterest or your usual social marketing channels. And don’t forget to hashtag them for more visibility.
Wondering where you find visual user-generated content for your business? Here are some pointers:
- Customers: Encourage and incentivize your customers to post photos and videos about your product or service.
- Influencers: Team up with influencers in your niche to create UGC content. This allows you to reach their audience while adding new content.
- Employees: Encourage your employees to give people an inside look at your company culture. This type of UGC content is great for attracting talent and shows your audience your brand values are real.
2. Videos
Did you know video content is booming right now? According to research from Wyzowl, 91 percent of businesses are using it. The main thing holding companies back from creating video content is a lack of time.
That’s where user-generated video content comes to the rescue.
Popular forms include product demonstrations, reviews, unboxing, or product testing. YouTube is packed full of this type of content.
For example, YouTuber HopeScope regularly posts reviews and comparison videos, like this one, pitting the best and worst-selling Sephora products against each other.
When encouraging users to post content, just remember you need to go where your audience is and consider the devices people use. For example, over 75 percent of US adults spend up to 2 hours a day watching short-form videos on mobile devices.
3. Testimonials & Reviews
Are you collecting customer testimonials? If not, you’re missing out on leveraging the best kind of social proof.
When you show people your item gets results, you’re helping people on the fence feel more confident and secure in their purchasing decisions.
How do you get testimonials?
- Reach out to past happy customers and ask for a short paragraph on how your product or service has helped them.
- Send out customer feedback forms after every purchase.
- Browse your comment sections on TikTok, Facebook, and Instagram. Take screenshots of comments complimenting your business and ask permission to use them in your marketing materials.
With 89 percent of customers reading reviews before making a purchase, it makes absolute sense to encourage customer reviews.
Reviews are similar to testimonials and are easy to find through a quick search or on trusted review sites like TrustPilot.
For more guidance, read my piece on how to get more reviews.
4. Organic Mentions
Every brand dreams of getting organic user-created content, right? When buyers share their love for your products online, it is like having the best advertisement.
What does organic UGC look like? It can take many forms, such as comments, brand mentions, blog posts, or podcasts.
For example, UGC comments on social media from people sharing their love for Fussy, a brand committed to sustainability and specializing in refillable natural deodorants.
Organic user-generated content is great for extra exposure, so be sure to reach out to posters and thank them. Ask them if you can share their thoughts in your marketing campaigns, too.
Benefits of User-Generated Content
There’s a lot to love about user-generated content. It’s authentic, it builds loyalty, and it’s free. Let’s explore these benefits further.
UGC Is More Authentic
Consumers today don’t just buy products. They buy into brands. According to a recent IPSOS poll, 69 percent of consumers will purchase from a company that shares their values.
How does customer-generated content make your brand more authentic?
It humanizes your company, helps people connect to you on a deeper level, and shows (not tells) your audience that your product will deliver on its values.
What was once word-of-mouth has now evolved into user-generated content.
Just like word-of-mouth recommendations from friends and family, UGC is worth its weight in gold.
Look at it from your own perspective. What do you find most authentic? A (paid) influencer, brand channels promoting their products, traditional paid marketing tactics, or the genuine opinion of someone who has bought and used a product?
UGC Is Time and Cost-Effective
How long does it take you to plan, shoot, edit, upload, and write a caption for a single post on social media?
If you’re publishing 5x per week, the minutes each post takes quickly adds up to a couple of hours.
Then, there’s the cost of in-house talents or outsourcing to freelance graphic designers.
User-generated marketing helps you shave off time and money by letting your community create the content for you and often brings a higher ROI than other advertising strategies because customers are creating and sharing the content for free. In comparison, paying to create a social media marketing campaign could set you back anywhere from $500 – $50,000.
For even more value, you can repurpose UGC in your social, web, email, and other marketing content, just so long as you ask for the creator’s permission.
UGC Builds Brand Loyalty
Seventy percent of customers say that trust has become more important to them.
You can’t build customer loyalty without first building trust, and you know something? User-created content can help you out here.
UGC allows you to engage with customers, establish and build relationships, and develop connections with your customers. It’s an essential part of community building, which enhances loyalty.
GoPro approaches this by using a #goprofamily hashtag on Instagram, where community members post their UGC:
Treat each piece of UGC as an opportunity to engage and to get to know your customers. Respond to comments so your potential buyers get a better idea of who’s behind the brand, too.
How to Get User-Generated Content
It only takes a little encouragement to get user-generated content coming your way. Follow the tips below to incentivize customers and collect the content you need.
Ask for UGC at the Right Time
Just like on your Instagram captions and landing pages, you need a strong call to action. Tell your audience what you want, and you’ll motivate your customers to create the type of UGC you need.
How do you achieve this?
Review your buyer’s journey, identify parts with a high emotional charge, and add a CTA to your user-generated content.
This is when your customer is excited about their purchase, for example:
- Right after making a purchase
- Unboxing your product or getting access to your service
- Seeing the result your product or service promised.
Some of the ways you can encourage UGC at these touchpoints are:
- Adding social media share buttons on your after-checkout page.
- Encouraging users to share their purchase on their Instagram Stories, and tag you.
- Send a note with your product with a CTA, brand hashtags, and social media handles.
- Emailing customers a few days after receiving your product to write a review.
- Sending out feedback forms at the end of an event.
Incentivize Customers With a Prize
User-generated content competitions are a strategy you can use a couple of times a year. They increase brand awareness and create powerful social proof you can use for months.
What is a UGC competition?
It’s when you ask your audience to create and share a piece of content related to your brand, and the winner gets a prize, like this example from DHL:
It builds brand awareness and motivates users to submit content the brand can use in its promotional campaigns.
Create Shareable Events
To give your customers the ideal opportunity to post UGC, create shareable events. I’m talking about things like creating beautiful and unique unboxing events, in-store spaces, and brand activation.
One of the best examples of this type of user-generated marketing is from Primark this year when it invited consumers to become fashion influencers for a day at a Soho pop-up event.
The event included special guest stylists, style-on-a-budget tips, free giveaways, and a selfie station encouraging participants to engage with the brand in a fun way. The selfie station is a great way to amplify the brand’s reach as attendees share their experiences on social media.
Incorporate User-Generated Content into Your Marketing
Once you’ve got enough user-generated content to work with, you’re ready to start putting it into action. Follow these tips to add it to your marketing mix.
1. Decide on Your UGC Campaign Goals
Before you can start calling for and collecting content, you need to know your goals. Do you want to:
- Increase conversions?
- Boost brand awareness?
- Publish informative content that influences buying decisions?
Let’s go back to GoPro again.
The brand publishes user-generated content that shows the different ways shoppers can use its products or services.
As a case study shows, using UGC turned GoPro into a content machine. It even offered a $1 million prize to get yet more content rolling in. Once the brand realized the sheer amount of organic UGC out there, it knew it had to make it part of its marketing strategy.
According to CampaignLive, at one point, 50 percent of GoPro’s video content, 80 percent of its social media photos, and 40 percent of its imagery were user-generated. GoPro now has 21 million Instagram followers, giving you an idea of how powerful and effective UGC can be.
2. Prioritize the Right Channels and UGC Types
First things first.
You’ve got to figure out the best spots to post your UGC. You don’t need to be on every social media site — you just need to post where your audience hangs out. I’m sure you’ve got a good sense of that already. But if not, develop a customer persona to understand where different demographics are most likely to gather.
Now it’s time to think about content types; Selectivity is key to any winning strategy.
Ask yourself what type of user-generated content will work best at each stage and test it out. For example, clothing brands could do well with photos and videos shared on more visual channels like Instagram and Pinterest. Or a B2B brand may want to prioritize testimonials and reviews and post those. Collect testimonials regularly to add them to your content bank. You can also use this social proof in your emails, Instagram Stories, and landing pages.
Hotels are another good example of this strategy.
Reviews and testimonials are the perfect type of UGC for their booking and product pages. On the other hand, photos and videos of customers enjoying their stay would work really well on Instagram.
You must also analyze what works at each touchpoint to get consistent results and make changes accordingly. My piece about mastering your marketing funnels will help you with this.
3. Find or Ask Users to Create UGC
If your brand has been around for a while, there’s a good chance users are already creating user-generated content.
Use a social listening tool to find what people say and implement the content into your marketing strategy. Using social listening tools, you can spot mentions about your business and see what people post.
Didn’t find anything?
Start asking your audience to create what you want. Encourage users to use your brand hashtag, incentivize reviews, and develop campaigns centered around UGC.
Whatever you decide, make sure it’s clear to your audience what you want, like BMW does when asking their almost 40 million followers to use the hashtag #BMWRepost. People share their UGC, and BMW gets to pick the ones they want to feature on their main account page. Win, win!
Don’t forget to actively reach out to your buyers. Post-purchase emails like the one we featured earlier are an ideal time to request a review or testimonial.
4. Request Permission and Give Credit to Creators
The most important rule of UGC is to always give credit where it’s due.
Don’t take someone else’s content and share it without tagging their account. That’s a big social media no-no.
Just because your brand gets mentioned in a customer-generated content post doesn’t mean you can republish it without permission.
Always reach out and ask if you can publish it on your social media pages, website, or utilize it in another area of your marketing. Without permission, you might upset even your most loyal brand advocates.
Besides, when you reach out, it shows the user that you like their content and gives them a positive feeling, further building customer relationships.
In fact, there’s an even bigger incentive to do it.
By tagging the creator, you show your followers that the UGC is authentic and wasn’t created by your team. Like this example from LEGO, that features ‘Fan Moments,’ giving credit to contributors for their UGC:
5. Promote Your User-Generated Content
Once your UGC starts rolling in, it’s time to use it!
- Schedule your photos and videos for Instagram and TikTok.
- Use the content to create ads on Facebook.
- Share reviews on your next email blast and add your best testimonials to your sales pages.
The more you promote with UGC content marketing, the more you’ll incentivize your followers to participate.
A big part of UGC is the community. It brings you and your audience closer together and makes everyone feel like they are a part of something. Like this email example from UK supplement manufacturer British Supplements, which includes customer product reviews in their email newsletters:
6. Track the Success of Your UGC Campaign
How do you know if your UGC content marketing campaign is successful? By tracking the following metrics:
- number of impressions
- total reach
- organic traffic
- social follows
- engagement rate
- total number of interactions
- volume of posts created
- total number of conversions
- conversion rate
- total revenue
- total ad spend
- click-through rates for ads
- return on ad spend
- growth of visual asset library
Use tools like Hootsuite to measure metrics such as post-performance, the best time to publish, and post organic video views. A hashtag tool like Brandmentions can also be useful for measuring engagement and brand awareness.
Monitor these KPIs throughout your campaign and make adjustments as needed to hit your goals.
User-Generated Content Examples
Big brands regularly encourage user-generated content to promote their products. Here are some examples to inspire you.
1. Starbucks
What’s one of the best ways to get user-generated content? Hosting a competition.
A couple of years ago, Starbucks launched the #RedCupContest. The coffee brand created the competition to promote its holiday-themed beverages and new red cups.
Starbucks encouraged coffee drinkers to decorate their red cups and submit their shots to win a gift card.
Why does this UGC campaign work so well?
It incentivizes customers to participate by offering a prize, increases brand awareness, and boosts sales because you have to buy a red cup to enter.
If you’re struggling to get UGC from your audience, offer an irresistible prize for participation. It’ll get those social media lurkers to take action, and you’ll get the content and brand engagement you’re craving.
2. Coca-Cola’s Share a Coke
Remember when Coca-Cola launched its “Share a Coke” campaign?
Featuring bottles named after people in every destination took the world by storm.
The brand asked customers to share photos of themselves with their personalized Coke bottle, resulting in 496,000 uses on Instagram and 89,000 tweets on Twitter.
Plus, more than 1.25 million teens tried the drink, and sales rose by 11 percent in the United States.
3. Lululemon #thesweatlife UGC Campaign
Lululemon is a yoga clothing brand known for its strong sense of community.
One reason behind its billion-dollar success is the brand’s user-generated content. Lululemon launched a hashtag campaign to encourage brand partners and users to post pictures using their gear on Instagram.
#TheSweatLife campaign was a huge success. It hit $4.6 million Earned Media Value (EMV) across 1.4k posts from 678 creators. The hashtag persists and has a huge community on Instagram:
4. REI #OptOutside
User-generated content doesn’t need to feature your products. Stand out from everyone else in your industry and use your brand values to make a statement.
A few years ago, outdoor retailer REI launched an anti-Black Friday UGC campaign. REI shut down its stores nationwide, encouraging customers to swap the shopping hysteria for time outside.
Using the hashtag #OptOutside, people shared user-created content of themselves in nature, and the idea spread like wildfire.
Within 24 hours, the brand’s social media impressions went up by 7000 percent, and 1.4 million people spent Black Friday outdoors.
To try this out, think about your brand’s values. Then brainstorm real ways people can showcase your values out in the real world, and share them online.
FAQs
What is user-generated content?
It’s content created by users and shared online. It can be videos, photos, reviews, or testimonials.
Do you have to pay for user-generated content?
No, you don’t need to pay for user-generated content. All you need to do is encourage your audience to create content featuring your product/service and tag your account in their posts. Don’t confuse UGC with sponsored ads from influencers.
Why is user-generated content used in marketing?
User-generated content is used in marketing because it’s powerful social proof. People trust recommendations from friends, family, and other humans online over the lip service of a brand. It humanizes your business and creates trust between you and your audience.
Do you have to get permission for user-generated content?
Yes. The best way to get permission for user-generated content is to ask. Reach out to the person in a direct message or the comment section and ask if you can repost their content.
What are the disadvantages of user-generated content?
Some of the disadvantages of user-generated content include negative reviews or feedback, unknown or unreliable sources, and cost. While UGC is generally considered free, you maymay need to pay someone to monitor and supervise your brand mentions.
How can I encourage users to leave more UGC?
You can encourage users to create UGC by using strong call-to-actions, hosting a UGC competition, tapping into influencer marketing, adding your social media handles to your packaging, and creating a brand hashtag.
Conclusion
Are you using social media to help drive your brand recognition?
Too many brands rely on their own content to increase social growth for their brand.
User-generated content not only removes some of the pressure of content creation demands but also builds credibility with your audience and naturally attracts more followers.
It’s time to think of user-generated content as an offensive strategy instead of being on defense against what people might say about your brand.
Be the kind of brand that people want to share with their peers and talk about on their social accounts.
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