Introduction
With the emergence and growth of social media platforms, the way of communication and interaction have been completely changed. New types of communities and groups have been formed that have become the prime source of human interaction. Now people mostly contact each other with the help of these platforms by posting different types of things. This content that is generated by the user about his personal experience about anything is user-generated content (UGC). But what is user-generated content engagement? What are its types and benefits? In this article, we will have a thorough discussion about it.
What is User Generated Content?
Two types of content are created and then posted on social media and other channels for different kinds of purposes like advertisement, review or just to interact with the general public. One content is created by different brands and other local businesses for advertisement and educational purposes. This content has a specific goal of increasing brand awareness and overall sales. However, there’s another type of content that is created by people and is shared without any specific reason. Any kind of content that is photos, videos, reviews, comments, etc about themselves, a product that they are using, or their personal experience about something. All these types of postings are called user-generated content which is posted on social media and other channels. Managing this content is called user-generated content engagement.
Sources of User-Generated Content
As we all know customer-generated content is created and shared by users instead of brands and is not meant for advertisement but for sharing personal experience, there are different sources of user-generated content such as:
Customers
Your prime source for user-generated content engagement is your customers. These customers buy products from your physical outlets or online websites and then shoot pictures or unboxing videos to share their personal experiences with the products. This customer-generated content is then posted on different platforms and sites for sharing personal experiences.
Brand Loyalists
Another prime source of user-generated content b2b or b2c is your brand loyalists. These people are the sort of customers that are super loyal to their favorite brand. These people have a fancy of buying things from a specific brand due to being inspired and impressed by any of their qualities. These people after buying things from the brands capture the moments and experiences and then post them.
Employees
In a reliable user-generated content marketing strategy, employees play a very important role by helping you create content that not only showcases your product and services in a better way but also elaborates the manufacturing process. These photos or videos that portray the company’s employees working in the units and creating products endorse the company’s quality and authenticity.
UGC Creators
Not every UGC content is created by the general public about their personal experience. Some professional user-generated content creators create a sort of review content about a company’s product or service. This content is different from other user-generated content b2b or b2c content because these content creators are paid by companies for creating this content.
Types of User-Generated Content
User-generated content influencer marketing is a very vast field and it can have many different types of it. These types can be photos, videos, personal experiences, and many more. Let’s have a look at them:
Images
In this type of user-generated content marketing strategy, any kind of photos and images about the products and services are created by users and then shared on multiple platforms.
Videos
This user-generated content marketing strategy involves creating short or long videos about the usage, guidelines, reviews, or unboxing of the given product. These videos then can be shared by users anywhere they like.
Social Media Content
Social media content is a very popular user-generated content marketing strategy. This involves posting any kind of user-generated data on social media websites like Twitter, Instagram Facebook, etc. This content can be photos, videos, recorded messages, and many more.
Testimonials
For better customer-generated content engagement, testimonials work as the best tool. These testimonials are usually client reviews or endorsements about any particular product or service. This can be any video or written message endorsing a company and its credibility.
Reviews
Unlike testimonials, reviews provide a different kind of user-generated content engagement. These reviews can be both positive and negative based on a client’s personal experience about the company’s product and service.
Live Streams
Live streams are one of the latest types of customer-generated content for user-generated content engagement. These are live videos created and shared by the general public which can include them sharing their point of view.
Blog Posts
When written content is shared for user-generated content engagement, it is called blog posts. These are a sort of articles and blogs that are created to explain the usage, benefits, harms, or any kind of useful information about any particular product, service, or topic.
Benefits of User-Generated Content
The user-generated content influencer marketing strategy provides you with several benefits that help you to increase your popularity and give an uplift to your business, brand, or community. Reliable user-generated content influencer marketing can provide you with the following benefits:
Increased Authenticity
Professional user-generated content provides a better level of authenticity to users as compared to company-generated content. People usually get impressed more by the content that is created by other customers instead of the content that companies create.
Better Engagement
Another very important benefit that professional user-generated content provides is better engagement between the brands and their audience. When users use these products and post videos, reviews, comments, or photos about these products they help in providing better engagement in the brand’s community.
Reliable Social Proof
Professional user-generated content serves as a very reliable social proof for a brand. When users use a particular product or service, and then post their honest reviews about them, this user-generated content motivates other people to trust the brand and its quality.
Advance Cost Effectiveness
Another prime benefit of user-generated content influencer marketing strategy is its benefits of cost-effectiveness. When users create and post useful content about a product or service, it helps the companies save the overall cost that they would spend on content generation.
More SEO Benefits
UGC content strategy also helps you get better results from your SEO. When users generate their content like reviews, social media mentions and other UGC content, this given content helps to improve the visibility of your website. It also drives more traffic to your targeted pages and sites.
Community Building
With the help of UGC content strategy, brands can also create a loyal fan base by encouraging coordination and collaboration among the users. When people from different areas and fields of life collaborate, each sharing their experience about a particular product, this helps to develop a sense of community in them.
Feedbacks and Insights
Advanced UGC content strategy helps brands to get a better idea and insights into their targeted audience’s preferences, interests, needs, and behavior. This information helps the brand to improve its products and services so that it can better serve its users.
Strategies for Encouraging Users to Generate Content
Due to its several benefits, advanced UGC content strategy can help you to uplift your business in many ways. There are several available strategies that you can adopt for implementing UGC content strategy in a better way such as:
Supportive Environment
One of the best strategies to encourage users to generate content is by providing them a safe and supportive environment. This means applying clear guidelines which helps the user to generate content complying with the company’s standards. Always ensure to creation of a sense of community among the users in which they support and uplift each other.
Providing Better Tools for Content Creation
Providing your customers with proper guidelines and tools for content creation is also very effective in getting your desired type of content. When users are guided with templates, guidelines, video tutorials, etc about how to create content, this develops a sense of empowerment among the users encouraging them to create the content.
Showcasing User’s Contributions
Another important strategy to boost user-generated content creation is by giving a sense of pride and honor to the users by showcasing their contributions. These contributions or created content are celebrated and shown on the company’s official pages, this helps to develop a sense of encouragement in users to create more content.
Maintaining Community Growth
Maintaining continuous community growth is always very important in helping companies to thrive by keeping the current users engaged and attracting new users at the same time. This involves guiding and promoting existing users to create more user-generated content either user-generated content b2b or b2c showcasing positive aspects of your products and services.
Establishing Authenticity
Establishing trust and authenticity also plays an important role in promoting users to generate more user-generated content. This strategy involves promoting users to generate more content by being inspired by the already created authentic user content.
Conclusion
All kinds of user-generated content, either it is user-generated content b2b or b2c, play a very crucial role in helping brands boost their business. This user-generated content has many benefits such as Increased Authenticity, Better Engagement, Reliable Social Proof, Advance, Cost Effectiveness, More SEO Benefits, Community Building, and Feedback and Insights. Due to all these benefits and many others, user-generated content is very important in business growth. To ensure your targeted users are creating your desired amount of content, you can also adopt these strategies: A supportive Environment, Providing Better Tools for Content, Creation, Showcasing User Contributions, Maintaining Community Growth, and Establishing Authenticity. So always stay one step ahead of your competitors with user-generated content.
