User Generated Content 101

It’s no secret that Customers are getting smarter everyday and their trust in marketing has gone down. Business owners and marketing professionals need to be savvier and more connected to the customer experience.

Having user generated content allows customers to be in control of how your brand is promoted and gives your brand a competitive edge.

In fact, here are some user generated content statistics that put this into perspective:

84% of consumers say they trust peer recommendations above all other sources of advertising.

79% of people say user generated content highly impacts their purchasing decision.

…and this is just scratching the surface.

In this article, I’ll break down everything you need to know about user generated content.

What Is User Generated Content:

User Generated Content is any form of content that your end user creates and posts on behalf of your brand, and when you create a system where UGC is scaled, you really harvest some incredible benefits.

Why is User Generated Content Important:

User generated content has many benefits for your bottom line and brand. I actually wrote an article that elaborates on 3 reasons why it’s important to prioritize it in your marketing.

The short list of reasons though is as follows:

Lower Marketing Costs:

Targeting a new audience or trying to build within an existing base can cost a lot of money and is inherently risky, especially if your data is limited. With user generated content, you can reach new audiences at a lower cost and then analyze the data to see if it’s worth it!

Adding More Value to Your Customer Journeys:

When you think of customer journey maps, it’s important to not only analyze where value is being added but also where you might potentially be losing the opportunity to add value.

You can’t reach everyone, but your loyal brand followers can reach users you don't have access to and are more than willing to connect you with others that would also like your products.

Building Brand Credibility:

If you’ve been a business owner or marketer for long enough, you know what the term “social proof” is. The reality is, marketers are having a hard time building trust with customers. With user generated content, the trust (or “social proof”) is built for you because the end user is sharing the positive experience they had with your brand

But brand credibility extends beyond having social proof, brand credibility also refers to consistency. When you have a user generated content engine built, you’re exhibiting that customers not only like and trust your products, but that you can also deliver a consist result.

Increased Customer Retention:

Keeping your users engaged with your brand is a great way to increase your retention, especially when they feel like they have control.

There are a lot more benefits, but these are a few that really help build your brand.

How To Scale User Generated Content:

Deciding to incorporate more user generated content can take your brand to the new heights, but how do you scale it? With a user generated content engine.

I created a video that breaks down how to create a user generated content engine in more detail, but here’s an overview of how to create one:

Step 1: Start With Your Business and Marketing Goal

This seems pretty straight forward, but a lot of business owners and marketing professionals get this step wrong.

Your business goal is pretty straight forward, it’s the goal you want the business to achieve. This is normally revenue related but it doesn’t have to be. An example of a business goal might be: Increase new business by 15%

Your marketing goal on the other hand is supportive of your business goal. An example of this might be: Increase new business by 15% by increasing our organic Instagram channel reach.

Step 2: Audit Your Customer Journey Maps

The real secret sauce in your user generated content engine is found when you audit your customer journey maps.

By auditing your journey maps, you’ll be able to see where you’re adding value, losing value, and also where you could add even more value.

Step 3: Audit Your Channels

Once you’ve audited your customer journey maps, go to the channels that you’ve found are losing value.

Step 4: Make a list of all the UGC directions you could take

Now that you’ve selected which channels are losing value, make a list of all the UGC directions you could take.

If you want a great place to start for UGC engine ideas, I wrote an entire article that shares my favorite ideas.

Step 5: Build upon 2–3 per quarter that make the most sense

Once you’ve selected the UGC directions you want to take, it’s time to build upon these over the next 2–3 quarters. Layer it into your content strategy. You’ll get some early feedback from customer but it’ll take about 2–3 quarters for them to really start to become involved with the brand and for the system to start showing fruitful results.

Pros and cons:

While having user generated content has its advantages, it’s also has its drawbacks.

Here are the top pros and cons to consider with user generated content:

Pros:

1. Trust is built for you: Take a step out of building trust with your users and let them do it for you

2. Less time spent creating content: Users create content for you so you don’t have to!

3. Your customers will tell you what they like about the brand: No matter how much data you have, the only people that really know what’s valuable about your product or service is your customers! UGC helps you tap into what they see as valuable.

Cons:

1. Heavy management: You’ll need to moderate the content that gets sent in. You want to make sure it’s brand friendly, relevant, and also interactive.

2. Creative Fatigue: Some UGC tactics are going to run into creative easier than others. For example: A giveaway where users share their images with their social media feed or a Snapchat filter that redirects to a separate page will have higher creative fatigue than branded hashtags. It’s also relative to your product or service.

3. Difficulty to track: tracking results isn’t as easy as plugging in MarTech software. You have to add a form of self attribution software or special links to know where sales are coming from.

There are certainly more pros and cons, but these are some of the foundational ones to consider.

Measuring Success and KPI’s:

How you measure success is everything when it comes to user generated content but all UGC should be tied to revenue in some way so you’re not wasting marketing spend.

Depending on the type of UGC, your customers journey with your company, and the channel, your key performance indicators may change but here are the fundamentals to get you started:

Unique Page Visitors and Impressions:

This measures how many visitors from outside of your page have come across your content. This is a staple to know if your UGC engine is working.

New Followers Over The Span of Your UGC Engine Build: Normally, measuring new followers is not crucial, but because UGC is all about keeping users engaged with the brand and driving organic marketing, knowing if you’re page is getting new followers helps a lot.

Individual Content Impressions:

We need to know which pieces of UGC are driving the most results and why.

Community Engagement:

This is a big one if your goal is to build a community. You need to know how many new members are signing up, what the overall engagement level within that community.

Use Cases:

Now that I’ve shared some of the fundamentals, let me show you what UGC looks like in action in different platforms and how it relates to the customer journey:

Instagram Story Mentions:

You can see here, Truist field is incentivizing people to share their moments on Instagram by tagging them. This allows them to gain access and build interest with a new audience.

Hashtags:

With this UGC engine strategy, this lake rental company is asking users to share their lake experience by using branded hashtags. They can then take this content and use it for their own brand.

Instagram Contests and Challenges:

Instagram contests and challenges are a fast and easy way to get users engaged with your brand. Starbucks did this by creating the #whitecupchallenge.

Reddit Communities:

Reddit Communities are quite possibly the Mecca for UGC tactics. You can build entire communities around topics that are related to your product or service. The most effective way to accomplish this is to try not to make your brand the forefront — instead, use your brand as a curator/moderator for the topic.

An example of this would be Starbucks. Starbucks would have a more effective UGC tactic on Reddit by moderating or having Starbucks related topics for users to engage in a community called r/espresso as opposed to r/Starbucks. The main reason for this being that r/espresso gives Starbucks a mask to let customers drive their espresso products.

These are just a few UGC tactics — there are certainly more examples of this. I wrote in detail about other UGC tactics here.

Conclusion:

User generated content is not a new concept but many brands still don’t take advantage of the many benefits it offers. If you can implement UGC into your own brand, you can give yourself a competitive edge.

If you liked this article and want to see more, connect with me on LinkedIn, YouTube, Medium, or explore more on my personal site!