User-generated content (UGC) is the perfect way for your customers to promote their memorable experiences with your product or service. Social media provides your business a unique opportunity to utilize UGC to boost brand awareness, grow and strengthen your community, and drive more sales.
There are many reasons why UGC is a valuable asset to content marketing teams.
In this post, we will dive into six of our top reasons why you need to incorporate more UGC into your marketing strategy.
We will also outline some examples of how you can leverage the power of UGC to grow your customer base.
Reason 1: User-Generated Video Content Will Elevate Your Social Media Growth and Reach
UGC campaigns pair nicely with social media platforms. When you combine user-generated video content and high-potential social channels, you can expand brand awareness and gain more followers for your pages.
It will also help you build trust and foster meaningful relationships with both current and potential customers.
There are a few different strategies you can use to accomplish this goal:
- Custom hashtags – create a custom hashtag and pair it with a social media contest on Instagram (video contest, caption contest, or giveaway)
- Twitter or Facebook challenges – ask your followers a question that forces them to create an answer in video form
- TikTok video contests – launch a video contest that incentivizes your followers to say what they love most about your business or brand
UGC is powerful, because your followers’ followers will trust what they say about you.
If your followers say nice things about you, this next level of followers will tend to follow suit, click on your page, and engage with your brand too.
Reason 2: User-Generated Content Allows You to Maximize Content Curation
UGC also combines well with a content curation strategy. Content curation is when your team annotates, sources, and shares valuable third-party content with your followers. Not only will this build trust with your audience, but it will also boost engagement.
You may already know the potential positives of content curation, but here are some other ways UGC will elevate your marketing effectiveness through content curation:
Increase Brand Awareness
The more content you curate, the more people will pay attention to your brand’s selections, share it with their followers, and raise awareness for your business.
Optimize Lead Generation and Nurturing
When people see you put out more content, it will make them curious about your business. Curating content will streamline the process of lead nurturing.
Elevate Social Media Metrics
Curating content will increase social media metrics such as engagement, likes, new followers, and shares due to increased interest.
Gain Trust With Your Audience
When you share quality third-party content, it will help your business establish credibility. More and more people will look toward your brand as a trusted thought leader in the industry.
Reason 3: User-Generated Content Enables Your Business to Better Understand Audience Insights
User-generated content can produce meaningful data for your marketing team, which most people do not expect upfront.
You can analyze which content your followers share out of everything you curate and distribute. This will enable you to learn how your ideal customer thinks and acts.
Your marketing team should be paying attention to what your followers value and find engaging. When you pair this with a data-driven video marketing strategy, you can reverse-engineer your future campaigns to generate leads and boost revenue.
So where do you start? The ideal first action is to perform an audit of the video content that your audience shares.
Pay attention to what they say in these videos, take notes, and then use this information to provide superior value going forward.
As you write down what your audience says in the videos, capture both the good and the bad.
For the positive things they say, focus your future content and video marketing campaigns on promoting these aspects of your business.
For the negative comments, use this as fuel for continuous process improvement.
When you unleash a UGC video campaign, always remember to align your format, channel, and audience to ensure the highest amount of participation. Focus on a platform with the largest potential audience.
As for the basis for the campaign, you should ensure that it lines up with your company’s mission.
Reason 4: You Can Personalize Your Marketing Content
When people share your content, it opens a new door for personalization. The best way to increase your audience’s engagement with your content is to find out what they value. Most people will connect with personalized advertisements.
Start by understanding what motivates your audience and followers to develop content and interact with your business.
Then, use this knowledge to mix in personalization with your advertising campaigns.
Personalizing the content marketing strategy will build a strong online community. The more tightly knit your community is, the better the brand and customer relationship will be.
Reason 5: User-Generated Video Content Will Make Your Overall Marketing Strategy More Unique
The content your audience generates will be different from the content produced by you and your marketing team. You can make the most out of your marketing strategy by harnessing an outsider’s viewpoint of your brand.
These videos will provide a much more relevant take to the viewer than that of the brand trying to sell its own product. The content is more likely to speak to what the customer values, which should be the priority anyway.
UGC video content will always capture the moments and events that a professional marketing team never could. You can peer into the customer’s life and how your product or service fits within it.
Once the UGC is created and published, it is then your company’s responsibility to use it as a valuable business development tool.
Fear of missing out (FOMO) is a common phenomenon. New audiences of people who do not follow you will see others posting about your business.
User-generated video content will encourage these new potential followers to join in the game of sharing meaningful content.
It is your responsibility to create contests and opportunities designed to make this happen.
Reason 6: User-Generated Content Provides SEO Advantages
There are a few critical ways in which UGC will boost your SEO initiatives.
Videos will do better than other forms of content, but the real value comes from positive customer reviews and people mentioning your business’ name on the internet.
When users publish videos, create content for their blog, and type out backlinks to your site, it will raise your SEO ranking.
UGC also provides you the opportunity to assess the words and phrases that are used the most to describe your brand and the user experience.
When you make a bank of these words and phrases, you can then elevate your keyword optimization strategy and research.
What Makes a Good User-Generated Content Marketing Video?
As mentioned above, all UGC can serve as valuable tools for your business. All content can provide critical feedback to make your company better.
UGC also gives you a good idea of what to post about going forward. However, what are some of the essential components of a UGC marketing video that could make the most impact?
Effective Storytelling
The best source of storytelling is when you get as close to the source as possible, which is your customer.
One of the signs of a quality UGC video is a unique story that applies to that specific person.
Storytelling empowers authentic people to discuss a topic that is important to them. If the user values your business, passion will shine through their voice.
Loyalty
Customer loyalty starts with a strong community. Powerful UGC videos begin with a tight-knit collection of unique people and personalities.
When users create videos about their experience with your product, it comes from a sense of loyalty.
The video should communicate that the person is not just a one-time customer. The message should be clear that they will associate with your business for life.
Specific Details
When you visualize the perfect UGC video, it should be clear why that person loves your business. General compliments and praise only goes so far.
The best UGC videos explain how your product or service has made that person’s life better, easier, or happier.
The video should paint a clear picture of the person’s emotions and their experience with your company, which will bring more people onboard.
Final Wrap-Up: What Makes User-Generated Video Content Different?
In today’s world, many buying decisions are driven by reviews.
These reviews serve as social proof from people who have already experienced the product or service.
Many people turn to the experiences of others to facilitate them toward a confident purchasing decision.
When focusing on the production of promotional videos vs. regular written content, videos are much more effective.
According to Wyzowl’s 2021 video marketing statistics report, 78% of video marketers claim that video has increased sales directly.
When people scroll through social media, there are thousands of posts that compete for their attention. A video is more likely to capture their attention.
When that video is produced by a loyal customer for your brand, it will pay off large dividends in the long run.
Images provided by the author under his or her own license.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions stated in this post are that of the author, and Return On Now may or may not agree with any or all of the commentary.
This guest post brought to you courtesy of Return On Now, Professional Austin SEO and PPC Services Company.
Michael Pirone
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