Are you planning on utilizing user-generated content but aren’t sure how to go about it? Here’s our easy-to-follow guide.
Even after deciding to use user-generated content (UGC) for the marketing of your company’s brand and having come up with a strategy to best utilize it, there’s still one final step—actually using UGC to meet your marketing goals. After all, just because you know what you want to get out of using UGC doesn’t mean you know how to get there.
It’s worth keeping in mind that there’s no one comprehensive guide that can perfectly encapsulate exactly how you should be using user-generated content to your advantage. Each marketing strategy will demand different approaches and implementations. Nonetheless, here are some of the best ways to make use of your UGC.
Promote A Unique Hashtag
While most marketing is for the ultimate purpose of increased sales, some marketing takes an indirect route to that end goal. Forming and promoting a unique hashtag for your brand or a particular product of yours can go a long way towards increasing brand loyalty and awareness. Both of which ultimately get your company more sales down the line. Not only that, but through that hashtag, identifying further UGC will become easier.
Brand loyalty means your customers will return to your products to buy them again and again. In turn, it means your brand’s reputation will grow as one that’s reliable. That subsequent increased awareness about your brand will mean a growing pool of potential customers. Thus, a unique hashtag associated with your brand will compound loyalty as it will give your faithful customers an easy identifier, but it will also give others something to keep your brand in mind.
Create a Contest
Creating a contest around UGC works much like a unique hashtag. However, where a hashtag has the potential to be linked with your brand forever, a contest is something that builds excitement and is a celebration around your brand for a designated period of time. With that said, what a contest has over a hashtag is that it can drum up much more attention due to the limited and semi-competitive nature of it.
A contest should be unified around a product or a theme, which can also have a unique hashtag just for the contest campaign, and should have a prize incentive at the end of it. Through a competition, you can generate community growth with your brand loyalists and stir up promotions from those who come across the contest submissions.
Feature it on Your Website
The use of UGC doesn’t have to be limited to social media. Although you can target potential customers by using services like our Shoppable Instagram to make your merchandise saleable on Instagram, you also want sales coming from your website.
Having a section within your website displaying UGC is similar to having a testimonials page. It’s showing anyone on the page the value others have gotten out of your merchandise. Not only does it give potential customers ease of mind when considering making a purchase, but it also encourages them to join your UGC community.
Utilize the Community for Feedback
Making the most out of UGC doesn’t have to be only about driving sales, it can also be about self-improvement. By looking over prominent UGC you can see which of your products is the most “Instagramable” or better understand what parts of your brand customers most identify with.
Moreover, you can engage with those creating UGC and get feedback directly from them. Through getting a better understanding of the customers who most closely line up with your brand, you’ll be able to enhance it further. And, at the end of the day, improving your brand will only boost your revenue in the long run.
