Let’s face it, the average employee is capable of generating tons of content for you every day. This content is relatable and trustworthy can be harnessed to improve your brand visibility, spruce up sales, create more traffic, and generate more leads. Of course, most businesses aren’t seeing the value in such content, but several have already taken advantage of it by building some fantastic campaigns merging User Generated Content (UGC) and employee advocacy.
In this blog, we’ll discuss the importance and impact of UGC on social media
What is User Generate Content?
UGC is exactly what the name says: content generated by your fans for your fans. The scope of UGC is so vast that it can virtually cover any subject. Plus, the type of content and the medium of distribution can vary too. It can be just about anything, from video to blog posts to comments to images and much more. Whether the user is a customer, a social media follower, or just a site visitor, his or her contribution can be crucial to your brand.
How Does UGC Fit In the Inbound Marketing Cycle?
As an inbound marketer, creating content or overseeing content generation (graphics, video, blog posts, etc.) is probably one of your main tasks. But, what if you could give your employees and users the chance to create the content for you? For one, it definitely takes a lot off your plate. UGC plays a key role in every step of inbound marketing cycle, from attracting customers in the awareness stage to converting to closing leads and delighting promoters. And the benefits are vast:
- Enhanced Engagements: Research by comScore showed that UGC increased user engagement by 28%
- Improved SEO Ranking: User-generated content can help you increase traffic searches by more than 25%
- Enhanced Credibility: Brand-created content is less trusted by people than that created by fellow consumers
- More Leads and Sales Conversions: A consumer is 4.6% more likely to make a purchase after viewing user-generated content
How to Leveraging UGC to Drive Engagement
Create Engaging Content
A user-generated campaign can draw a lot of attention to your brand, and your employees are sure to get the ball rolling. Moreover, the engagement factor for your employees and prospective customers with such campaigns cannot be compared to any other. Obviously, since user participation is the key factor here. Once you’ve got the attention of your audience, you can then generate content that is relatable, actionable and in line with the running campaign.
Improve Brand Awareness
User-generated content has tremendous potential to go viral – they can be shared and reshared, improving your brand awareness. The Starbucks White Cup Challenge and the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge are just a few to be named. In fact, surveys can come in handy here. Use Google Forms, SurveyMonkey, EverNote, and TypeForm to gather feedback and take your brand to the next level.
Leverage Reviews to Get More Leads and Sales
Right off the bat, people trust customer reviewed products way more than those without a customer review or paid reviews from influencers. That’s why it’s actually worth the time and effort invested in employee advocacy. Harnessing user-generated reviews from your brand ambassadors can garner more sales and leads.
The method is simple, yet quite effective.
