The end goal of any good marketing strategy should be to generate awareness of your brand with your target audience and to make sure they know what your business or brand is doing. There are many ways to go about doing this, one way is to use user-generated content.

As user-generated content is coming directly from your customers it’s usually seen as much more trustworthy and authentic, especially compared to self-promotion. To truly make user-generated content an effective part of your marketing strategy, you’ll need to know how to create and promote it. Stick around and we’ll tell you exactly how to do that!

Creating User-generated Content (UGC)
So, you’re ready to use UGC as part of your marketing strategy but how do you go about creating it? Just Ask. You’ve probably heard the saying if you want something then just ask and it really can be that simple when you’re trying to create user-generated content. The community you have built around your brand is already made up of people who love your brand and are just waiting to share their stories. Ask them to share their experiences of your brand or business perhaps on an Instagram story with a unique hashtag. This is a great way to create user-generated content.

Use Social Listening Tools
Social listening tools can be used to find public posts that mention your brand/business, your website or any other phrases that may be relevant to your brand. This can be a very effective way to find genuine user-generated content about your business. Before you share any user-generated content found via social listening tools it’s best to ask permission to share it. Generally, the answer is usually an eager yes .It leaves your customers feeling appreciated and spreads positive brand awareness. That’s a win-win if you ask us!

Create Events/Competitions.
Creating events or competitions to promote your business can be an easy way to create user-generated content. Make sure you’re creating an experience that’s exciting and offers incentives for taking part. This way your community should be more than happy to engage with you. If you also ask your community to use a brand-related hashtag and tag you in their posts this can be an easy way to collect the user-generated content that is created.

Use Branded Hashtags
A call to action can help you to tell your audience exactly how you would like them to share their experiences with your brand. An easy way to do this is to use your Instagram or Twitter bio to ask your audience to share a specific hashtag or to tag you in any posts about their experience with your brand. This also makes it very easy to collect any content that’s generated.

Promoting User-generated Content
Okay so now you know how to collect your user-generated content, you also need to know how to promote it.

Share Posts
Sharing images or videos that have been created by your consumers as a post on your Instagram or another social platform; is an easy way to share your user-generated content with a wider audience. It’s also a good way to encourage others to tag you or use hashtags in their posts and possibly have their posts and profile shared on your profile.
Ad Campaigns
Using user-generated content in your ad campaigns can be a very effective way to generate more sales. Customer feedback or reviews are received by cold customers as extremely trustworthy and can be the difference between them becoming a customer or not.

Share it in Your Stories
A great way to promote user-generated content to your followers and a wider audience is to share it within your stories on Instagram and Facebook. Make sure you ask users before sharing their content and tag them in your stories, so any viewers can go directly to their profile. To make the promotion of your user-generated content last longer save it to your story highlights. Story highlights are one of the first things potential customers see when they first view on your profile. So, having a good amount of user-generated content on your story highlights can be a great way to make that first sale with new customers.

Hopefully, you now have a better understanding of what user-generated content is, how you can create it and how to promote it to generate brand awareness and sales!

 

If your business needs sparkling and creative ideas for your first UGC campaign or you need help with any aspect of sales, marketing or PR. Then contact ELC Associates today. Here’s how it works.