How you can increase User-Generated Content

While growing your brand’s influence online, you will always find an increase in User-Generated Content (UGC) to be incredibly important. This type of media will save you time and money while building brand loyalty and trust. These posts also tend to get way more engagements than any other type of posts. This means that there are more people finding your brand.

This all sounds amazing to have, but getting and growing it can be a difficult task. In this article, we are going to go over ways that you can take into your social media marketing plan to increase your User-Generated Content.

How to increase User-generated Content.

User-generated Content consists of all social media posts, online videos and blog posts that are about your brand, but not made or paid for by your brand. This is already an amazing help to any brand growth, but we can take it a step further.

Below are five different ways that you can use and encourage more User-generated content into your own content.

Be the first to engage.

While all User-generated Content is made by others, encouraging it starts with you. Your brand needs to be one that engages with its clients and fans on a regular basis. This needs to happen before you ask for any kind of User-generated Content, otherwise, it will be out of character for your brand. You can engage by liking, commenting and responding to conversations shares on your client’s platforms.

Show how your audience can tag you.
Hashtags and @mentions are incredibly important when it comes to finding user-generated content. During the engaging stages, you should make a clear and easy to use brand hashtag. Be sure to use it in a natural way so that your clients will know to use it when they want to get your attention.

Put the spotlight on your fans.
Now that we are regularly engaging with our clients and we have a great hashtag to use, we want to start finding and sharing their content. Find examples of great User-generated Content that you would like to see more of and share it on your online platforms. Remember to always get consent from the person who made the post and to reference them accurately when you share.

Incentivise more content.

There are many things that can motivate an audience to do things. So far, the only incentive we have talked has been exposure. Quite often, your audience will just be happy to be rewarded with just a share and an @mention. We don’t have to stop there, in fact, we can increase the amount of User-generated Content as well as the quality of it.

Here are two simple ways in which we can do this:

Social rewards.
If your brand has an email newsletter, blog or any other way it shares information with its clients, then you can use them to encourage more User-generated Content. Make it clear to your clients that their photos, videos or reviews will appear on one of your platforms if you like it. Keeping this consistent could bring a very natural increase in User-generated Content and quality.

Competition rewards.
There’s nothing like a competition to get fans interacting with your brand and generating content. This type of reward is similar to social rewards except it has a bigger but more limited reward. If you offer a significant reward that is on brand or appeals to your clients, entries will come. This is especially true if the entry can be as simple as one photo.

Host an event.

It can be physical or virtual, but depending on what type of business your brand runs, you might choose to run a workshop, webinar or a fundraiser for a cause you believe in. What matters is that your clients can engage with it and in turn, share their experience.

To make the event very successful for content, you need to make an event hashtag. This way you and others can find the content that is specifically make for the event. Encourage attendees to share their time at your event with the hashtag. You can even incorporate the incentive step into the event hashtag to get the ball rolling.

Give tests and samples of your latest offers.

User-generated content often comes from enthusiasm for your product or service. There probably isn’t a more exciting way to get that giving your brands new offering for free before its release. This can be to super fans or influencers that are in a similar field. Getting these types of people involved early on will encourage them to share their feelings on your product or service with others, and that is where the content comes in. Ask the people you give it to for feedback. You don’t have to be too picky about where the content is shared as long as you can share from where they post.

Bonus tip: If they post from a platform that you are not on, there is likely a small community that you are missing out on. This is a chance to expand to even more clients online.

Provide picture worthy places.

If your business has a physical store or your event has a non-virtual location, you can make a place where clients and attendees will want to take pictures and share them. Set up a stunning banner with the relevant hashtags and encourage others to take pictures there. You can even take the picture and post it yourself with their consent.

Increase the quality of your content with Web2Web.

Staying on top of the latest trends, curating User-generated Content and increasing the quality of your posts are all part of social media management and they all require time and experience to get right. That is why Web2Web offers professional social media management and marketing services. With over 10 years of experience with online business, we know how to get your clients more engaged and increase your User-generated Content.