How User Generated Content Can Help Your Business

Before discussing strategies, we need to establish the several types of UGC. This has shifted wildly throughout the years, but we have hit a plateau on the platforms and mediums people use, like social media, their phones, YouTube, etc.

Photos and Videos – This is self-explanatory, people are taking pictures or videos of your product and describing their opinions in some way, the descriptions.

Reviews and Testimonials – This is where people leave a comment on your Google My Business account, and they leave a rating from one to five stars and have the option to describe their experience. Testimonials can be a step further, where a client or customer might reach out, tell you their experience, and you get permission to quote them on your website or social media accounts.

Social Media Posts and Stories – When a client posts on their own personal or professional social media account about your service or product. Usually, social media posts are accompanied by hashtags (we will utilize these when we start discussing strategy). Stories are a short window of either a picture or video of a place/business/product that only last for 24 hours on some social media platforms.

Blog posts and Articles – Some people who have larger audiences might create a blog post to help with their own visibility and piggy0back on the success of a brand. If you search “IKEA review” often you will see a blog post describing someone’s experience about using Ikea, it is that simple. Articles are a bit wider-reaching and might go up on new outlet websites or LinkedIn profiles that spotlight news stories or the goings on of an industry.

UGC has become an important part of social media and content for brands and businesses in every industry. If there are an outrageous number of random people on the internet making short-form videos about this amazing new burrito chain, the odds that others will trust the quality of that burrito place will skyrocket. A company has a conflicted interest in selling their product, but strangers on the internet are not beholden to anyone. This is also good for a business to see valid criticisms of their product and service, and it gives brands an opportunity to make things right, fix the situation, and do some damage control that they might not have seen in the first place without UGC.

Companies that can create a community encouraging feedback will look much more trustworthy to the public. Building trust among your customers and interacting with them on prominent issues, or anything at all honestly, is a terrific way for people to get to know your values. It is a form of customer support. When some creates user generated content criticizing a company and that company reaches out to right that wrong, odds are that customer will make a follow-up about the amazing service and create more content about it singing your praises.

When customers and communities feel safe criticizing, they feel safe buying. There is no promising idea that should be immune to criticism. Moving the focus away from negatives, you can reward your customer base with giveaways, competitions, and exclusive deals to encourage their interaction. Offer a special discount code to those that fill out a survey, create a hashtag for people to use and select a winner for the best Instagram post and give them a gift card.

User generated content also helps those individuals who might create content for their living, and this is where the big money comes in. If a prominent content creator makes a huge content piece talking about how amazing your product is, their audience will more than likely purchase from you in the future.

Remember when we mentioned using hashtags to encourage UGC? There is no better way to encourage people in the wild to interact with you than a hashtag. Put your hashtag front and center where people can see it boldly and unabashedly. Now if they snap a picture of themselves eating at your restaurant, shopping at your store, using your construction service, or whatever it is you provide, it will link their audience and their account as an interaction for your business.

This sets up one of the coolest marketing campaigns you can imagine: photo and video contests. Here is the most unique thing about it, it hardly costs you anything other than the reward to the winner, and you pick the winner, talk about a win-win. Once the competition starts everyone who uses that hashtag will pop up under that search term, and you have multiple avenues to share those posts on your own social media account.

This is the full strategy:

1. Create a photo/video contest with a specific hashtag you created.
2. Pick out a reasonable reward (a gift card to your store)
3. Throughout the week search for that hashtag.
4. Share every photo/video with that hashtag to your own social media accounts and remind viewers there is a competition for a reward.
5. Once the period is complete, select a winner and ask them to post about it and share their post.

Now, you have created multiple photos, videos, descriptions with keywords, and backlinks to your website with just a reward of a gift card. This stays on the internet forever, and if people search for that hashtag, they will find all this user generated content.

Creating a loyalty program with an incentive is another way to stir up user generated content. If you have customers that create content regularly, invite them to a behind-the-scenes opportunity or a free experience if they create more of the same content about it. If you have chiropractic practice offer a free session and invite them to record and take as many pictures as possible, have everyone sign a release form, and provide as much assistance as available with hashtags, copy, and unique testimonials. This is incredibly interactive, and people curious about your business will be excited to see actual reviews of an experience.

In the previous section we mentioned getting a release for the filming, and this will ensure you have the option of using the content for your own personal website or social media. When the customer completes their content, make sure to share it, but to also ask for the raw videos/photos to upload it all to your own website and socials and offer to tag the individual(s). This is mutually beneficial, as the creator gets more content, more exposure, and a gift card. Your business will get exposure, real interaction from the experience, and will not even have to edit or post anything if you choose to do so, it is all on the user of the user generated content.

This is the new testimonial. Having this type of user generated content is now ready to be dispersed to email lists, social media posts, or blogs on your business’ website. With the release you drafted up you will be able to use this material anywhere and everywhere. Create an introductory email on your customer relationship management (CRM) system and have it logged away forever after. If you can get users to generate content for you and for themselves, it can end up funneled into your sales pipeline flawlessly.

The last way to highlight user generated content is to sponsor it yourself. Send someone a product for a review, give something away to people making content for free, or invite them to create something about a first-time experience for free. Sponsoring videos has become a large part of the user generated content sphere and can cause some hesitation among businesses. You really cannot script a review for them if you are looking for honest feedback and naturally formed opinions. Again, if you run into criticism, it is advised you fix the issue, put effort towards solving the problem, and then reach out to people and encourage them to make a new review with an updated opinion. This makes your company look responsible, down to earth, and trustworthy.

Remember to get consent from people if you are using the raw materials, like photos or videos, as your own. It is one thing to share someone else’s post, but another to take that material and post it as your own original content. If you do get consent from the customer, make sure to do your best to credit them as best you can.

Moderating comments on user generated content is also in the best practices. If you have hateful, hurtful, or just annoying comments under a piece of UGC, make sure to delete them or respond in defense. People are often horrible and will say horrible things, and if someone was nice enough to do all the work of taking pictures or editing a video, the least you can do is cut off a pipeline of mean or insensitive comments.

If you do end up holding competitions or contests with user generated content, make sure to draft a concise list of guidelines and preferences. It can be as simple as adding a very bland page to your website that is hidden and linking it with a QR code near the contest announcement. People may be hurtful or mean about your business or the user who generated the content, and that is why selecting which posts to share is tantamount to success here.

Make sure to avoid overly engaged or scripted user generated content. This should be understood, but do not write up a playbook for people who are trying to give a genuine opinion. We must take the good with the bad in this world and if they are disappointed in something make sure to do your best to correct it and encourage them to make a follow up after the issues have been resolved. It comes off as much more genuine, and you do not seem cowardly from hiding from fair criticism.

There are many analytical tools in services like HubSpot and Meta to determine the effect and interactivity of user generated content. In fact, when you place a hashtag into a social media site, it will automatically give you an idea of how many posts are being made using that exact hashtag, go try it out and see for yourself.

Social media posts oftentimes will show the number of likes, shares, and comments on a specific post. Some social media sites, like Instagram and TikTok will show you the popularity of hashtags in real time across the platform. Monitoring the activity of certain topics has never been easier, and you can use these avenues to track and record the progress by using hashtag analytics.

The trickiest part about user generated content is that it can be hard to see how much traffic has gone from a customer’s social media post or YouTube video to your website or sales. The return on investment might have a large grey area, or a random sudden spike. There might be someone out there with a huge audience reviewing your business right now and you have no idea, and their audience decided they love your company, and your sales shot up unexpectedly. The opposite might also happen, a random piece of user generated content might critique your business in a very harsh way and their audience then avoids your business. That is the internet in a nutshell though, random stuff happening all the time everywhere all at once.

User generated content can be used in your favor. Getting out in front of a large audience with your name is valuable and creating an environment where your customers feel safe to admire, indulge, or criticize is particularly important. Do not retaliate against bad reviews, but instead adapt and put effort towards solving problems. Instead, create an environment that rewards people for making content about your business.

Encourage interactions with customers by offering exceptional deals or contests with hashtags, and then share everything you can from that contest to your own social media platform. Capitalize on people creating content for yourself with contests, and make sure to invite people to film special interactions behind the scenes.

Nothing fosters admiration among a community like an interactive business, and when people start making content for you it would be unwise to pass it by without capitalizing on it. If you ever have questions on fostering that sort of community, make sure to reach out to us here at Acclaim and we will happily talk to you about some ideas we have tried in the past.