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Audiences now want to connect more on social media with the brands they choose.
User-generated content (UGC) provides a solution to this, as it’s an authentic type of content with great benefits for brands and users.
But how can brands leverage UGC?
In this guide, you’ll learn how to develop your UGC marketing strategy in detail.
Without further ado, let's get into it!
Tip #1: Choose Social Networks Relevant to Your Growth
Starting the journey of creating a successful UGC strategy requires you to choose the right social media networks.
Find the channels with the right soil to grow your reach.
These channels refer to various social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more.
Some factors that’ll help you make the right choice are:
- Demographics of users for each platform
- Features each platform offers for creating and promoting content
- Content formats each platform allows
Having collected this information, you can make an educated decision about choosing the right platform.
There is also the option of having a presence on multiple channels to ensure maximum exposure.
The process of selecting the proper channels greatly influences your UGC campaign, as its goal is to create interaction between the brand and the target audience.
With this objective in mind, choose a platform that your audience is familiar with and uses daily.
Tip #2: Set Very Specific Goals
Something equally important before starting your content marketing campaigns is defining your goals.
Objectives guide both the implementation of your strategy and its evaluation.
It’s often helpful to break down goals into short-term and long-term goals.
Short-term goals are those that can be accomplished quickly and should focus on achieving immediate wins to validate the campaign's success.
These goals include:
- Increasing the number of UGC content pieces
- Growing social media engagement
- Collecting feedback
- Increasing user sign-ups
Long-term goals define the campaign’s ultimate purpose, typically looking at how successful the campaign was.
This can include:
- Increasing brand awareness
- Generating leads
- Enhancing customer loyalty
- Building a community
In addition to goals, key performance indicators (KPIs) should be established to measure the UGC campaign's performance and maximize the brand’s online presence.
By monitoring KPIs such as engagement rate, conversion rate, average time on page, and more, brands gain insights into using their UGC to engage with their customers.
Additionally, by tracking the KPIs of their UGC, brands can better identify content that is successful and content that may need to be improved.
This can help brands create better content strategies, increase customer engagement, and increase their overall return on investment (ROI).
Tip #3: Motivate Customers to Advocate Your Brand
UGC encourages customers to become advocates of your brand by helping them share their experiences and create a connection with potential new customers.
When it comes to UGC, its effectiveness lies in passing on customer satisfaction, enthusiasm, and positive experiences to the broader community.
Working with existing customers to create UGC is a highly effective method of encouraging them to promote your brand to others.
When creating successful UGC, businesses should focus on providing incentives to encourage customers to share their experiences.
These can be in the form of exclusive access to rewards, discounts, or even exclusive merchandise.
When customers feel their advocacy is rewarded, their motivation increases, and more of them are likely to continue advocating your brand.
These rewards are a great way to reinforce the bond between the customer and the brand, as the customer feels valued and appreciated.
Word-of-mouth can quickly amplify your message, brand, or product across many channels, and when customers advocate through UGC, they form a network that supports your brand.
Fun fact: Customers trust word of mouth 92% more than any other type of advertising.
So, this type of content can help you boost conversion rates—at least among younger generations. In fact, 78% of millennials find UGC helpful in making purchasing decisions.
Plus, UGC is a cost-efficient way to transform customers into brand advocates and drive sales to your business.
Tip #4: Create Surveys and Contests to Drive Engagement
UGC posts have a 28% higher engagement rate than high-quality content produced by brands on social media.
UGC content allows customers to connect with the company emotionally, helps build trust, and creates a feeling of belonging.
One way to generate UGC and drive engagement is to create surveys and contests.
Surveys help you collect valuable customer feedback, such as opinions about products and services, likes and dislikes, and more.
Companies can then use UGC feedback to make better decisions and improve the customer experience.
Similarly, contests can also be used to motivate customers to create content.
For example, businesses can host competitions where customers submit pictures or videos of themselves using the product or service.
These could be judged based on creativity, originality, or technical skill.
Winning entries could be featured on the company’s website, social media, or other outlets.
In order to maximize the impact of these surveys and contests, businesses should offer attractive rewards. Examples could include gift cards, discounts, or even free products or services.
In addition, businesses need to promote these contests or surveys and ensure enough willing participants know about them.
The promotion can be done through email, social media, traditional ads, flyers—you name it. The important thing is to get the word out there.
Finally, tracking the results of the surveys and contests is essential.
This will help you determine the most successful promotions and areas that need improvement.
You can also use the results to shape your future campaigns or marketing efforts.
Overall, by offering attractive rewards and promoting the campaigns well, brands can ensure that their surveys and contests have a lasting impact on their customers.
Tip #5: Leverage Brand Outreach
Brand outreach for partnerships is a powerful way to enable businesses to grow exponentially.
Essentially, brand outreach refers to reaching out to other businesses and collaborating on projects.
This can take various forms, such as sponsored social media posts, product giveaways and discounts, influencer marketing, and more.
There are numerous advantages of implementing a brand outreach strategy, such as achieving greater brand visibility, creating mutual recognition and trust, as well as generating new contacts.
The most successful brands out there have all taken advantage of the various benefits of brand outreach.
An effective outreach strategy can help brands increase their influence, reach new audiences, and tell their story efficiently and cost-effectively.
The first step of brand outreach should involve researching partnering brands that are similar to yours.
Look for organizations with a large and loyal customer base, as well as those that can help you access new markets.
After identifying key brand partners, contact them and create a compelling proposal. Emphasize the benefits of partnering with your business and outline the goals that you both have to achieve.
When doing so, be transparent! Provide all the necessary documentation, such as contracts and press releases.
Finally, keep track of any new leads or contacts and the overall reach of your collaboration.
Did you gain any beneficial insights or generate new customers?
This and other such questions should help you assess your outreach efforts' effectiveness and identify any areas of improvement.
Tip #6: Collaborate with Influencers
According to research, 61% of consumers trust the recommendations of influencers.
Collaborate with influencers that have the know-how on creating and distributing social media content to build relationships and create authentic UGC content.
When it comes to influencers, it pays to research them carefully. You want to choose content creators that know what they’re doing and are relevant to your niche.
This research process can be challenging if done manually. That’s why Insense is here—to make the whole process of finding the best partners a piece of cake.
Insense marketplace has more than 35,000 creators and helps brands identify the best fit for them. The platform also helps brands launch campaign briefs for creators and manage their campaigns’ performance.
Tip #7: Push for Video UGC
UGC videos receive 10x more views than branded content produced by brands on YouTube.
Platforms like TikTok and Instagram promote video content more with their algorithms.
As you can see, video-sharing platforms are becoming go-to destinations for marketers and consumers.
While there are several types of user-generated content, UGC videos offer many benefits, starting with authenticity.
In fact, customers find visual UGC 85% more influential than branded content.
So, UGC videos are more natural, giving viewers a better sense of the creator’s message.
UGC videos can also serve as social proof, as they allow brands to show the real experiences of their customers in a way that feels more personal and authentic.
With UGC videos, brands also access a new avenue for social content.
Brands can leverage the recordings of their customers and active followers and repurpose them to create new, engaging content.
This opens up a powerful platform for content marketing, enabling brands to engage their target audience in a more direct and tailored way.
This kind of content leads to higher trust and a more positive impression among consumers.
The key to attracting more UGC videos is through actions like branded hashtags, as we’ll see right away.
Tip #8: Use Campaign Hashtags
A hashtag campaign is a form of online promotion focused on a specific branded topic.
The goal is to leverage the social power of the hashtag on your social media marketing strategy to engage a broad audience on a particular topic.
Through this promotion, brands can reach a broader audience.
The hashtag you choose should be relevant and exciting to the target audience.
Once the hashtag is chosen, the next step is getting it out there and starting to generate UGC.
This can be done by inviting real people to join the campaign.
Brands should encourage users to create more content as the hashtag gains traction.
These UGC posts should be repurposed by the brand and displayed on social channels.
Hashtag campaigns allow brands to harness the power of UGC to spread their message and promote their values.
Promoting the hashtag proactively and getting a high engagement rate is important to maximize reach.
So, announce the hashtag through stories, in-feed posts, or Instagram Reels.
Finally, track the hashtag’s performance through the specific tabs on the social media platforms you used for this campaign.
While launching a branded hashtag sounds easy, it takes creativity to capture users' interest. The key ingredient you need is ✨inspiration✨.
Tip #9: Take Inspiration from Big UGC Creators
Creativity and inspiration are essential for creating unique UGC campaigns.
Where can you find the inspiration to create amazing digital marketing initiatives?
UGC content creators are here for you. They are a consistently growing source of online inspiration.
There is much to learn from UGC creators regarding technique, strategy, and style.
To begin with, many UGC creators understand the need for a consistent style and content format that resonates with their audience.
What’s more, UGC creators tend to showcase their creativity and uniqueness in their storytelling, making the narrative even more captivating.
Plus, established UGC creators are consistent in their branding and content production strategy.
This includes effectively engaging their audience with updates, product reviews, testimonials, unboxing videos, and talking in ‘real-time’ with their followers.
Above all else, they focus on producing inspiring content, showcasing creative energy around their discussion topics.
In other words, UGC creators employ a wide range of motivational tactics that appeal to viewers, providing a wide variety of content for their audience to enjoy.
Tip #10: Measure Your UGC Campaign
You’ll only be able to tell how successful your UGC campaign is by measuring its success to ensure it meets your goals and objectives.
An effective UCG campaign should be designed with specific metrics and KPIs in mind, which will be monitored throughout the campaign's life.
When measuring the success of a UGC campaign, the first metric to monitor is engagement. This includes shares, comments, invites, and clicks that indicate how effectively the audience engages with your content.
A high engagement rate suggests that the message and content resonate with viewers and encourage them to repost it.
Social media provides built-in analytics tools that allow you to track likes, hashtags, and other metrics that may be associated with your content.
Another key metric in measuring the success of your UCG campaign is the number of converted customers.
Tracking customer conversions or submissions reveals how effectively the content prompts viewers to take the desired action.
If the campaign's goal is for viewers to purchase a product or service, tracking retailer sales and traffic to your product pages can be a valuable measurement.
The next metric to measure is the follower count since it allows brands to preview their reach and influence.
The final metric of a successful UGC campaign is brand awareness.
This indicates how many people are familiar with your brand and its message.
You can measure brand awareness through surveys or search engine queries related to your brand.
A successful UGC campaign largely depends on measuring the right metrics, so brands will make the necessary adjustments to ensure positive results.
Let's wrap this up!
Over to You
There you have it!
You’ve learned a step-by-step process to jump into UGC with an educated approach.
Not sure where to get started?
We’ll help you out! Book a demo with Insense, and we’ll help you create your UGC campaigns from scratch.
