How To Boost Your Brand With User Generated Content
If you’ve been following our blog over the past few weeks, you will by now have soaked in a lot of useful knowledge about creating unique content. However, there’s a lot more to content marketing than just this aspect – you also want to engage people; to see them sharing – and talking about – your articles/videos/brand with their friends. After all, people notoriously listen to referrals from friends and family.
However, when aiming to have people share your content, you need to first understand what motivates them to do so in the first place. Put yourself in the customer’s shoes for a moment and ponder…what makes you excited about sharing content?
For me personally, I love when a brand makes me feel like I’m a part of their business, or when I have the chance to be involved and share my own ideas. This sort of relatability and involvement is usually referred to as ‘user generated content,’ or ‘UGC’ for short – a term which refers to content (such as images, video, blogs etc) that has been created by fans or consumers, and achieves an end-goal of promoting a brand.
Take for example Coca Cola’s personalised coke bottle campaign. People went nuts for the chance to have their name on a bottle of Coke, and before we knew it, social media feeds were filled with consumers eager to share their personalised coke bottle selfies. Every day, ordinary people were endorsing Coke for free – and more importantly, they wanted to!
As another example, how about Tourism Queensland’s 2009 ‘Best Job in the World’ campaign? Widely regarded as one of the most successful tourism campaigns ever, it saw Tourism Queensland offer the chance for everyday Australians and travelers to apply for the ultimate dream job – a six-month contract working as a Caretaker for the Islands of the Great Barrier Reef.
The campaign absolutely blew up, with 34,000 people from over 200 countries submitting their own videos and applications for the job! It was an incredible response and really made the Great Barrier Reef stand out to the world as an ideal holiday destination.
As you can see, user generated content can be one of the best ways to boost your online presence, as it allows customers to feel a strong sense of inclusion and personal involvement with your brand.
However, before you go ahead and launch your own UGC initiative, ensure you:
- Promote your campaign through your website and social media.
- Give users a reason to participate by offering something in return – whether that’s a physical prize, or something as simple as featuring them on your social media to thousands of fans. The end goal should be to make sure they feel rewarded.
- Actively encourage the people who participate throughout the campaign by responding to their comments, liking their posts or sharing their efforts. It will help them to feel positive about taking the time out to get involved.
- Ensure you include a disclaimer that once users have submitted their user-generated content, it belongs to you and can be re-purposed for business marketing etc. Don’t forget to follow – and state to your audience that you do so – any state regulations in regards to prizes and giveaways
Looking for more content marketing tips? Sign up for our upcoming Content Marketing Webinar, or check out parts 1 and 2 of this series below:
Part 1: New to Content Marketing? Tips for Making Your Blog More Engaging!
Part 2: Content Marketing Tips: Why You Need To Tailor Content For Social Media