User-generated content plays a key role in today’s marketing landscape, especially for small businesses looking to break their product into big industries.
User-generated content (UGC) is a powerful marketing tool for any business. Combining social media strategies with word of mouth, UGC allows your brand to step back and take pride in its work. Unfortunately, UGC doesn’t come from just having an excellent product. Here are three simple ways to encourage free user-generated content that you need to know.
Focus on Appealing Designs
While no single formula exists for every industry working on their visual branding and marketing strategies, putting effort into creating eye-catching, impressive designs is crucial for engaging audiences.
Consider, for example, beauty industry products. UGC goes a long way to show the product, but makeup alone loses its branding once it’s on the skin. The solution is to make the unboxing and packaging worth showing off in a user’s content.
Custom fulfillment services give brands a chance to tell a unique story throughout the customer experience and motivate the creation of UGC. If a Youtuber promotes your website, will their screen capture of your site’s landing page show your brand’s best side? Will a product unboxing have easy-to-read logos?
Communicate Directly With Your Audience
The UGC you’re looking for comes from social media, a tool that gives businesses one incredible, unique opportunity: the chance to engage their audience directly. Here are just a few ways to make the most of this communication channel:
- Ask questions in your social media posts
- Engage with the content of followers
- Respond quickly to direct messages using brand voice
- Host giveaways and promotions
By keeping up your brand’s active presence, you give customers a reason to interact. For example, ask fans to post pictures of themselves or their pets with your product or incentivize participation with story features or a unique way to interact with the brand.
Choose Platforms With Purpose
It’s important to keep in mind that not every social media platform is equal. Every social media site or app reaches a different audience with varied expectations, humor, and interests.
When directly reaching out to influencers or fans to help generate content, curate your conversation to the content that will be equally successful for you both. For example, you can begin conversations about brand sustainability or workplace culture changes on LinkedIn and create buzz. Meanwhile, Instagram content demands more exciting visuals and acts as an opportunity to showcase products.
What you create and share on each platform must suit the platform’s purpose so that users see a reason to engage, create, and promote what your company is doing there.
The methods brands use to encourage free user-generated content must adapt to changing audiences. Millennial audiences may not respond well to direct online interaction, while Gen Z often takes a chance to show off the products and brands they support. Market research and an open mind are crucial for any business looking to up their content game.
