How often do you amplify your audience or customer’s voice? Their reviews, testimonials, or posts have untapped potential that many often ignore or underutilize.
With over 2.6 million videos uploaded daily on YouTube, 500 million tweets, and 7.5 million blog posts published daily, content saturation is at an all-time high.
This has resulted in a high need for authentic content and its hiding in plain sight. Leveraging User-Generated Content (UGC)is the way to go.
The reason is simple: people trust people (clients) more than businesses or brands. Hearing or reading your clients’ words increases credibility, engagement, effectiveness, and SEO.
Not sure how to go about it? This post will teach you how to get the best out of your customer’s voice.
Why Leveraging User-Generated Content Works
Here are some benefits of UGC.
1. Build Trust and Brand Credibility
Authentic customer experiences are powerful social proof; they tell potential clients what they can get.
Think about the last time you made a hotel booking. Reading reviews that highlight the location, cleanliness, and safety would be deciding factors.
In the same way they influenced you, yours will also influence purchasing decisions.
2. More Engagement and Community Bond
Leveraging user-generated content shows that you appreciate your audience’s contributions. It motivates and encourages more participation, fostering a sense of community among your audience.
3. Effective Source of Content
They provide a ready supply of fresh content; goodbye to content drought. You can use UGC to generate various forms of content, reducing the burden of creating new content.
They don’t only improve your content flow; they are relevant because they reflect your audience’s present interest.
4. Boost SEO
User-generated language usually contains words and relevant keywords, which can impact search engine optimization. They include various words or terms that people are actively searching for.
In addition, the right engagement signals that your content is valuable and credible.
5. Customer Insights
This source of content provides important information about your audience. You’ll know their needs, pain points, sentiments, and new trends. This will help you create content that addresses your audience’s actual needs in their preferred language.
Related Post: Analyzing Your Audience for Better Content
Strategies for Getting UGC
Finding UGC can be a bit daunting, but there is a trick to it.
Monitor Social Media
Social Media is a goldmine for User-Generated Content. Track your brand mentions and hashtags to capture content that points to you. You can use social listening tools to automate this. Manual searches and monitoring competitor mentions are also helpful in finding commonly used terms and insight.
Moreover, you should always engage actively with your audience.
Contests and Campaigns
Ever wondered why many contents or challenges go viral? It’s because they are often relatable, fun, and self-expressing. You can run photo challenges with hashtags, before and after campaigns, videos, or prompt written content that showcases your brand.
To do this correctly, you need clear guidelines and forms of incentives to motivate participation.
Encourage Reviews
Solicit for testimonials as only a few people will leave testimonials on their own accord.
Whichever way you communicate with your audience, leverage opportunities to get reviews.
Whether emails, apps, social media, or direct links, always encourage your audience to drop their feedback.
Ask Direct Questions
Encourage UGC by asking direct questions. It could be as CTAs or just regular prompts like sharing a photo, “What memories does this remind you of?”, “what are your thoughts,” etc.
Create a Dedicated Space for UGC
It’s common for brands to have forums, social media groups, or community pages; they can also benefit you.
Dedicated spaces make engagement easier, enhance a sense of belonging, and generate richer feedback.
Optimize for Search Engine
SEO influences all content types, whether directly or indirectly. Add relevant keywords from your audience to your content and images to increase your reach and rankings.
How to Curate and Showcase UGC
Let’s go on to how to showcase UGC for more results.
1. Set Clear Guidelines and Criteria
Ensure user content aligns with your brand and objectives. It should be relevant and have to project you in a positive light.
Remember to get permission before featuring your audience’s content and, when necessary, give them credit for any original content.
Be transparent and avoid manipulating or creating false UGC.
2. Implement an Organization System
As with many content creation tasks, you’ll need a system to manage your UGC workflow.
Use drives or dedicated folders like Google Drive or Dropbox to organize content. Social media management tools like Sprout Social or Hootsuite can gather UGC across platforms.
Blog or website owners can integrate user content management into CMS. Label each file for easy searching and use.
3. Tactically Integrate UGC Across Channels
Feature the content across your content channels. For websites, home pages, product pages, and testimonials are ideal. Add UGC to social media posts, stories, ads, and general content.
For email campaigns, include testimonials, social posts, photos and videos, ratings where possible, and reviews.
4. Repurpose UGC for Different Formats
Repurposing is a must to fully leverage UGC for maximum benefit because it caters to a wider range of audience.
Turn those written reviews into eye-catching infographics or videos. One review, multiple content format.
Check out our post on how to repurpose content.
Empower Your User’s Voices
There are so many advantages to leveraging user-generated content in your content strategy. Use these techniques to prompt and gather feedback in your audience’s words.
Make them feel heard, transform their voices into impactful content that connects with a wider audience.
What is your favorite form of UGC?
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