How to: Leverage User-Generated Content

Over recent years, user-generated content (UGC) has gained prominence as a powerful digital marketing tool, offering numerous benefits for businesses aiming to encourage authentic engagement, foster trust, and drive conversions.

What is UGC?

UGC refers to any content produced by your customers or website visitors, including:

• customer testimonials
• reviews on social channels like Facebook, or through Google reviews
• images of them with or using your product or service
• video reviews or commentary on Insta, Facebook, YouTube, Tiktok or Snapchat
• blog posts
• social media posts talking about your brand, your staff, your customer experience or your products and services

which can be incorporated into your marketing strategy.

By integrating UGC into your campaigns, your business can build credibility, improve brand image, and create more personalised connections with your target audience. 

Most importantly, quality UGC builds trust with your potential customer base. If they can see genuine comments and images or video from your customers, that is a hugely powerful form of word of mouth recommendation that will do more than most other paid marketing to drive new business your way.

As the online world becomes increasingly saturated with information, advertisements and branded content, consumers are progressively looking for authentic connections with the brands they engage with. Building user-generated content into your marketing activity can help you establish more genuine interactions with your audience and foster a sense of community around your brand.

This blog post explores the potential of user-generated content for enhancing your digital marketing efforts and provides insights on how to leverage UGC effectively for your business.

Happy Monday understands the importance of user-generated content in the digital marketing landscape, and our team of digital marketing professionals is well-equipped to help businesses integrate effective UGC strategies into your marketing activity.

Identifying and Encouraging Valuable User-Generated Content

Before incorporating UGC into your digital marketing strategy, it’s crucial to identify the types of user-generated content that best align with your brand values and objectives. Encouraging customers to share their experiences with your products or services can generate a wealth of valuable content.

Some methods for encouraging UGC include:

1. Social Media Contests: Organise contests or giveaways on social media platforms, encouraging users to submit their content for a chance to win a prize. This not only generates valuable content but also raises brand awareness and engagement. It can be as simple as asking them with comment with a photo, or it can use a third party platform where they need to upload an image or video to enter.
2. Hashtag Campaigns: Create a branded hashtag and encourage users to create and share their own content using your tag. This approach makes it easy for your team to find and aggregate content, providing you with user-generated content to share across your digital channels. For example, a unique to you hashtag is easy to pull in as a curated Instagram feed into your website. Make sure you keep an eye on that feed however to make sure it hasn’t been hijacked by another brand or posters simply adding a large batch of hashtags to their post to try and get traction. If you are using a plugin for your website to pull in that feed, make sure it is one that allows you to manually remove content that is not on-brand for you.
3. Testimonial and Review Requests: Encourage customers to submit testimonials or reviews about your products or services and feature these on your website to demonstrate social proof and build trust with potential customers.

Curating and Sharing User-Generated Content

Once you have collected a range of UGC, consider the most suitable ways to curate and share this content within your marketing efforts:

1. Social Media: Include user-generated content within your social media posting schedule or develop a ‘featured customer’ series that highlights high-quality submissions from your audience.
2. Email Marketing: Personalise your email marketing campaigns by incorporating user-generated content that demonstrates the real-world impacts and experiences of your products or services. Potential customers are always interested to see who is buying or using your products or services.
3. Website Integration: Integrate UGC into your website, by embedding social media feeds and galleries or displaying user reviews and testimonials alongside product descriptions. This increases credibility and can help drive conversions. If you have an e-commerce site using Shopify or WooCommerce, there are multiple apps and plugins available that enable verified customers to post reviews with images of the product they received.
   
4. Influencer Marketing: Collaborate with influential users within your target audience to grow brand exposure and generate valuable UGC that appeals to their followers. Many brands find that working with influencers who have smaller audiences – known as “micro-influencers”, and who genuinely like or already use your products is the most effective form of influencer marketing. Make sure you research which micro influencers already have an audience that is interested in the type of product or service you provide before approaching them. There is no value at all in the “spray and pray” approach of sending PR packages to multiple influencers in the hope they will talk about your product.
   

Monitoring and Moderating User-Generated Content

It’s essential to monitor and moderate user-generated content to ensure your brand image remains consistent and professional. Keep an eye on the quality and relevance of submitted content, and ensure that you consistently maintain your branding guidelines and messaging. Tips for monitoring and moderating UGC include:

1. Set Guidelines for Submission: Clearly define the desired content types and quality criteria, encouraging users to share high-quality, brand-aligned submissions.
2. Regularly Monitor Submissions: Regularly check content shared by your users, ensuring they meet the guidelines and provide value to your marketing strategy.
3. Moderate User Dialogue: In cases where UGC sparks audience discussions, monitor the conversation to ensure that negative or inappropriate comments are addressed in a timely and professional manner.
4. Have a Plan in Place: Make sure that whoever is managing your social channels has a clear guide on how to manage your UGC, particularly if you get negative feedback.

Measuring the Success of User-Generated Content

To evaluate the effectiveness of your UGC marketing campaigns, track key performance indicators (KPIs) and assess the results against your objectives. Some KPIs to consider include:

1. Engagement Metrics: Track likes, comments, shares, and clicks on UGC to determine its effectiveness in engaging your audience.
2. User Reach and Impressions: Monitor the number of users exposed to your UGC and the total impressions it generates to gauge the impact on brand visibility.
3. Conversion Rates: Assess the impact of UGC on conversion rates, attributing conversions to specific UGC initiatives to understand which campaigns drive the most significant results.
4. Referral Traffic: Keep track of referral traffic to your website that originates from UGC, enabling you to determine the effectiveness of specific user-generated content in driving website visitors.

Harnessing the Power of User-Generated Content

Incorporating user-generated content into your marketing strategy allows you to create authentic connections with your target audience and build trust around your brand. By strategically encouraging, curating and leveraging UGC, your marketing campaigns can reach new heights in engagement, brand visibility, and conversion rates.

At Happy Monday, our team of experienced digital marketing professionals is ready to assist you in developing a customised strategy that incorporates user-generated content to optimise your marketing performance. 

Together, we will explore how UGC and digital marketing in Christchurch can elevate your brand, create authentic customer connections, and achieve your marketing goals. Contact us today to get started.