In today’s tumultuous waters of digital marketing, user-generated content (UGC) has emerged as a mighty wind in brands’ sails. Fan-driven content enables higher audience engagement and fosters a closer sense of community, which is one of the reasons you should also incorporate UGC into your 2024 digital marketing strategy. From social media posts to reviews and testimonials, UGC gives audiences authentic perspectives that resonate with consumers. Nonetheless, to fully exploit this fair wind, marketers must take advantage of some established best practices and try to add some surprise tactics to the mix to ensure authenticity, legality, and alignment with brand values. Here are ten essential guidelines for leveraging user-generated content effectively:
Types of User-Generated Content
Content created and published by (predominantly) unpaid contributors includes anything from blogs, images, and social media posts to videos. It also utilizes different marketing channels, such as web pages and social media networks. The fact that brands gain recognition through these unsolicited fan-made advertisements makes the process feel more authentic to new customers. Not to mention, UGC is somewhat of a guerilla marketing tactic that helps reduce costs without compromising the quality of online materials connected to the brand. User-generated content (UGC) comes in many forms:
- Social media posts, whether they are regular posts, carousels, stories, or videos.
- Reviews and ratings, whether they are short or long form.
- YouTube videos, both long and short form.
- Blog posts that include paid and unpaid content, as well as backlinks.
- Live streams are gaining traction, especially on platforms like YouTube Live, Facebook Live, Twitch, and many others.
Reviews and ratings are some of the most compelling pieces of gratis content, especially when they appear on product pages. 79% of consumers say UGC helps drive their decision-making. It is noteworthy that different types of UGC will work better with different brands. It should go without saying that direct-to-consumer fashion brands benefit from visual social media posts on platforms like Instagram. So let’s dive into best practices to enhance your free user accolades and better your digital marketing strategies.
Navigating the Digital Marketing Seas: UGC Best Practices
Like with all other strategic moves, when it comes to digital marketing, brands should start by defining clear objectives. Whether you wish to increase brand visibility, drive engagement, or boost sales, you might have to pick one goal at a time. The authenticity that free user posts bring goes a long way, but pursuing several initiatives at once may wear the audience’s patience thin. UGC stands better on its own because it evades hard sales tactics, meaning brands will maximize their impact only if they don’t betray customers’ trust. Furthermore, without clear objectives, measuring progress becomes vague and inaccurate. Here’s a short guide to setting SMART social media goals and tracking them effectively:
1. Align with Marketing Objectives:
Start by aligning social media goals with broader marketing objectives. For example, if your goal is brand awareness, focus on growing followers and crafting posts and pages that reflect brand values. If you want to focus on boosting the sales funnel, create content that encourages purchases through effective CTAs and A/B testing. Clear goals help direct social media efforts effectively, which is no simple feat, as producing large quantities of material is time-consuming.
Most companies make the mistake of not knowing their target audience’s demographics, interests, and behaviors. Less than half of marketers are aware of their audience’s interests, hobbies, shopping habits, purchasing history, and content consumption, according to research conducted by HubSpot. Therefore, brands that focus on understanding their customers may have the upper hand in this competitive market.
2. Know Your Goals
There are a lot of businesses of all sizes whose marketing teams claim how much user-generated content has put wind in their sails. Statistics show that these genuine posts are 35% more memorable than what professional marketers usually create. Here is a sneak peek into how free reviews from your audience can enhance your efforts when you know your goals:
- Boosting brand awareness: New businesses may struggle to earn customer loyalty in the beginning. This is where creating social proof comes into play—consumers trust their peers. An overwhelming 79% of people say UGC influences their buying choices.
- Improving social engagement: Growing on social media organically is close to impossible these days. Plus, organic growth is unreliable in the long term for marketers who depend on quickly turning a profit. Hootsuite’s research shows that the average unpaid reach for a Facebook post is 5.17% of a page’s likes, while the average paid reach is 28.1%. However, authentic reviews posted by followers and fans have a better chance of garnering positive attention. After all, they revolve around relatable people who actually buy the brand’s goods and not around the one percent of rich and famous influencers. At the end of the day, everyone likes to feel special and like they belong to a community.
- Finding more leads: 92% of consumers trust UGC more than they do traditional advertising. This means that consumers would rather hear from each other than from the company that sells the product. Makes sense—when you reshare valuable insights into your goods from the audience, it has a much higher chance to attract the attention of like-minded peers.
- Intensifying content generation: Typically, crafting content consumes anywhere from one to three hours, which business owners don’t have, even on a slow day, if there ever was such a thing. But UGC does that job for you, in a way. Therefore, leveraging reviews from fans saves a significant amount of time and effort.
3. Conduct a Social Media Audit:
Getting good at the social media game starts with a thorough social media audit. The data you gather helps gauge performance and pinpoint the strengths of your social media profiles, further helping you identify and eradicate weaknesses. Although there is no perfection, and new weaknesses might come up down the line, a professional audit uncovers areas ripe for improvement, which is an essential step in any social media tactic.
Check out this simple guide on How to Conduct a Social Media Audit in Just Three Steps. Once that is done, you can confidently define key metrics that align with overarching goals, such as reach, engagement rate, conversions, and audience growth. Regular monitoring is a must, with the help of in-app analytics or trusted tools that help brands adjust quickly. Monthly reports with key metric figures, trend comparisons, and actionable insights are invaluable for businesses growing their following and making a profit off of social media sales.
4. Create powerful hashtags
Hashtags enhance reach, especially on apps like Twitter and Instagram. Besides augmenting brand visibility, they facilitate community engagement and amplify UGC reach. Effective hashtags are concise and easy to understand. They are also great at grouping similar posts so users can discover and engage with branded content more quickly. Use short phrases or just a few words to make your unique “#” stand out.
For example, people love going on Target runs. Now, typing #TargetRun below a post has become a popular and engaging way to capture the fun of a Target haul. Shoppers who relate to this hashtag are likelier to use it in their posts, enhancing brand visibility. Another example is the sports goods brand Nike. Their team uses many hashtags to showcase their trustworthiness, such as the #stopasianhate campaign.
5. Always request permission
When incorporating user-generated content into promotions, ensure legal compliance and prevent copyright infringement by following these guidelines:
- Before sharing those lovely posts your consumers created, ensure your caption gives credit where credit’s due. Tag the original creators, as well as the source. It is as easy as including their handle in your caption. Anyone viewing your post can easily visit the original creator’s profile, which they will surely appreciate. And that is how a community is built.
- Also, before you get to tagging, ask for permission from the original poster. Users like to communicate via direct messages on Instagram, but brands also request permission publicly by commenting on their posts. Additionally, emails are still a surefire way to reach out to collaborators and obtain explicit consent. Finally, leveraging tools like SocialPilot can assist brands in automating how they request permissions and tag contributors in UGC posts.
- Check terms of service. Failure to comply with these regulations grants apps the authority to terminate accounts. User-generated is incredibly challenging because users have more freedom with their content, and many developers don’t screen content in advance. Therefore, curating and adhering to UGC Terms & Conditions is essential for apps or sites that allow user-generated content, facilitating a way for social media platforms to regulate content and enforce rules.
UGC Unleashed: ASOS, Doritos, and Apple’s Success Stories
The following success stories showcase how companies like ASOS, Doritos, and Apple have effectively taken advantage of the organic content their followers created. See how they have managed to boost engagement, elevate brand perception, and nurture their respective online communities.
ASOS: #AsSeenOnMe
ASOS took user-generated content a step further and started publishing social media posts on their website. Their marketing team astutely created an “As Seen on Me” section on the web page, where they celebrate their customers who used the #AsSeenOnMe hashtag on Instagram. This strategy exemplifies a good way to nurture a community while solidifying shoppers’ trust. Also, customers who visit the ASOS site can get a clearer idea of how the clothes would look on different body types, inspiring them to purchase new outfits.
Doritos: Legion of Creators
Doritos almost has a cult following, making their UGC campaigns especially compelling. Their marketing team knows how to create a buzz around the brand’s name. They consistently leverage UGC by launching challenges like “The Legion of the Bold.” Doritos invites users to compete in their social media contests for fun prizes. Their followers create visuals using branded images and share them on popular apps. For the #LegionOfCreators hashtag, fans were so creative that they crafted funny posts such as fake weather announcements and photos of themselves sitting on thrones made of chips. This approach not only fosters a sense of community but generates trending hashtags that incite a wider circle of people to participate in the challenge, thus growing Doritos’ following. On top of that, trending hashtags equals viral videos, prolonging the shelf life of the challenge and all the benefits it brings the brand.
To summarize, the Doritos challenge strategy works well because it caters to some of the brand’s most loyal fans, like teens, college students, gamers, and content creators. But it also gives the company a chance to monitor and discriminate the content creation process.
Apple: #ShotoniPhone
Cell phone cameras have come a long way since their inception. Not to get into the complete history of the camera phone, let’s just say they were not very good. But they have evolved (at record speed) to the point where we can’t imagine not capturing essential moments of our lives. Not only are our camera rolls constantly full, but so are our social media feeds. So when Apple launched its #ShotoniPhone campaign to showcase the power of its camera in 2022, the tech giant’s Instagram notifications went haywire with hundreds of thousands of responses. Apple’s efforts to regain the trust of its fan base with real-life photos and videos taken with the iPhone paid off. The hashtag challenge garnered the much wanted attention for the brand.
Photographers and average iPhone users alike contributed their high-quality photos to the campaign by posting them to various social channels. It was a great way to boost brand awareness, with the hashtag generating more than 29 million Instagram posts.
Conclusion
In conclusion, harnessing the power of free content made by users helps brands navigate the stormy waters of digital marketing. Its authentic nature fosters higher engagement, and its relatable aesthetic cultivates a sense of community through peer-generated images and videos. The relatability factor makes UGC a valuable asset for companies looking to connect with their customers, supercharging their popularity, brand awareness efforts, or sales. Moreover, with enough planning, learning the likes and dislikes of your audience, and clear goal-setting, marketers can leverage consumer-created content to amplify their online presence, further fueling strong connections with their audience. As demonstrated by successful examples like ASOS, Doritos, and Apple, incorporating UGC into marketing strategies can yield significant benefits, driving growth and success in the digital realm.
