Any good marketing campaign dreams of an amazing word of mouth marketing where people are left talking about your brand.

Are you a digital marketer?

Well, then I have a secret for you.

User-generated content is your best shot to make this dream come true. It is the most trusted form of marketing that there is at present.

Creating relevant and original content for your brand is really important, and if it is created by your users themselves, then nothing could be better than that.

It’s like you are making your customers do marketing for you.

But it is not as plain and simple as said. Certain tactics and tricks are required that allows you to employ and utilize user-generated content to it’s full potential.

This article throws light on such interesting ideas that let you leverage UGC for your digital marketing campaigns.

Come, let’s have a look how.

Run UGC Campaigns And Hashtag Contests

One of the best ways to collect user-generated content is through hashtag contests and UGC campaigns.

As a brand, you could host a UGC inspired hashtag contest on social media. For that purpose, you may create brand dedicated hashtags. Thereafter, you may ask your users, customers, and followers to contribute to the hashtag campaigns.

It is actually interesting because it taps into the creative sides of the users. Also, the perk of getting displayed as part of brand content is too rewarding for the users. And if you are rewarding them with giveaways, then that just ensures more engagement by the users and followers.

Promoting your UGC and hashtag campaigns spread a word about it, engages more and more users, thus making it a trend. Nothing could be better than that. A trending UGC campaign naturally attracts immense user engagement and interaction.

Creating a perfect brand hashtags is really important for making your UGC campaigns really successful. Your hashtag must be trendy, simple, short, and catchy. It must resonate with the idea of your UGC campaign and brand simultaneously.

Display UGC Through Social Walls At Events And On Websites

Another amazing way of employing user-generated content for your brand promotion is by displaying it your users in a really interesting and engaging manner.

Now, how do you do that?

A social wall is a perfect answer to that question. A social wall is one of the most interesting, attractive, and engaging ways to display user-generated content.

You could employ a social wall to display user-generated content to your audience at an event, to your potential customers outside your outlet through digital signage or even your website visitors by embedding the social wall into your website.

A social wall is generally accompanied by a social aggregator which comes with powerful moderation, curation, and analytics features. So, you are not just limited to the displaying feature of a social wall.

Best way of doing so is by embedding Instagram feed on your business website.

The moderation and curation feature helps you to maintain your content quality and health while the analytics feature helps you get a deeper insight into customer behavior and sentiments associated with the user-generated content that you are displaying.

Collect And Display User-Generated Reviews

User-generated reviews that are posted online by genuine customers have a great impact on the minds of aspiring customers.

Most of the users before making any online purchase look for reviews of customers who have already bought that same product.

Customers always trust user-generated reviews and peer recommendations more than branded content. It’s like in the form of these reviews, your loyal customers are vouching for your the quality of your services and products.

Now, these online reviews may be both positive and negative. You should know how to deal with both positive and negative online reviews.

When a positive review is posted about you online, as a marketer, it’s a matter of joy for you. You can proudly display that to your other users through a social wall, digital signage, or by embedding it on your website. Always thank your users for a positive review. This makes them feel acknowledged and they are prompted to review you positively even in the future.

Negative reviews, although unwanted but are really necessary. Obviously, you cannot display it as your digital signage or embed it on your website. But you can surely learn from it. Negative reviews bring out those aspects of your services and products that you might have initially ignored or skipped. Remember to leave a comment that pacifies your unsatisfied customers and makes them believe that you will do your best to improve your services and products in the future. Don’t leave them unanswered.

Display User Stories Through Videos And Ad Campaigns

When you run ad campaigns for your brands online, just remember one thing-

“Your users are smart. They understand the difference between real and fake. They will know if what you are showing is genuine or produced by your marketing team.”

So, try to incorporate real user experiences and stories as a part of your ad campaigns.

Try showing your real users sharing their stories in the videos you incorporate as part of your video marketing strategy.

You could also support a cause in that direction while promoting your ad campaign.

That helps you create a personal link with the users. It presents the humane side of your non-living brand entity.

It also helps you target users that are generally not under your target audience radar but they resonate with the cause you are supporting.

Over To You

These were some of the major and interesting ideas that could help you leverage user-generated content for your marketing purposes.

This article is contributed by Anne Griffin, Digital marketer and Technical writer — Embed Instagram Feed on website

Have an interesting article or blog to share with our readers? Let’s get it published