Are you looking for an innovative way to engage and grow your social media following? You might want to try a User Generated Content Campaign!
User Generated Content (UGC) is basically anything people make and share about your brand, like photos, videos, reviews, or posts. It’s as simple as your customers tagging your company and using your special hashtag when they talk about your products on social media.
This can be a powerful method for increasing engagement and boosting sales.
Here’s just some of the benefits:
Authenticity: UGC provides real, authentic content from actual users, customers, or fans. People are more likely to trust and engage with content from their peers over branded content because it feels more genuine and less like a sales pitch.
Relatability: When your followers see content from other people like them, they can more easily picture themselves using or enjoying your product or service. This relatability can spur engagement and interest.
Community Building: By sharing UGC, you’re highlighting and giving a voice to your community members. This can encourage more participation and interaction, as others will want to join in and potentially get featured too.
Fresh Content: UGC gives you an almost unlimited source of fresh content. By sharing different perspectives from different users, you can keep your feed interesting, which helps to increase engagement.
Social Proof: Featuring UGC serves as an endorsement or testimonial from satisfied customers or users. This “social proof” can boost your brand’s credibility and encourage others to interact with your brand.
Okay, so now we’ve convinced you of the benefits you are probably asking yourself “What type of User Generated Content should I ask for?”
Here are a few ideas that we think work incredibly well for the Sewing and Vacuum Industry:
Customer Creations: Encourage your customers to share photos of their sewing projects or clean homes after using your vacuum cleaners. This not only showcases your products in action but also provides inspiration for other customers.
Before and After Shots: Encourage users to post ‘before and after’ photos demonstrating the effectiveness of your vacuum cleaners. This visual evidence can act as a powerful endorsement for your products.
Product Reviews: Request customers to post short video reviews of your products. These testimonials add credibility and can help influence potential customers who are considering your products. You could give your customers incentives to post reviews by either giving them store credit or other means of compensation for posting and sharing this type of content.
Sewing or Cleaning Tips: Ask your customers to share their best sewing tips or cleaning hacks using your products. This can be a fun way to engage your audience and provide valuable content.
Contests: Run a contest where customers post a photo or video using your product with a unique branded hashtag. You can offer a small prize for the best post. This can generate a lot of engagement and content for your brand.
Feature Customers: Regularly feature UGC on your own feed, always with permission and proper credit. This makes your customers feel valued and encourages more people to share their own content in hopes of being featured.
How to spread the word about your new UGC campaign-
- Post information about it on your website. You can even create a page on your website dedicated to the UGC participants that pulls in the content from your branded # and features the images on your website.
- Create signage inside your store. You can print posters, or flyers and place them at checkout or around the store.
- Create printed material that is placed with your shipped items. This is a great way to get people thinking about snapping and sharing their excitement about the new product they received.
- Newsletters- Include reminders to participate in all your newsletters. You could even feature your favorite content inside your email campaign. This could also boost your newsletter engagement rates.
- Organic Social Media Posts- Add reminders to participate in your social media post rotation.
- Paid Social Media Ads- Give your reach a little boost by putting some ad spend on your campaign.
- Work with an Influencer- Identify and collaborate with people that have larger followings and share a similar fan base.
Important Take Aways:
Make sure before you get started, and you choose your branded hashtag it is unique and no one else is using it for anything. Otherwise, it will be very difficult to manage and utilize properly.
UGC is all about highlighting and engaging with your community. Be sure to monitor your hashtag closely and interact with posts by liking, commenting, and sharing to further boost engagement.
Before sharing other people’s content. Reach out to them and ask permission. This also a really great way to build relationships with your brand advocates. If you do share their content, don’t forget to give proper credit to them by tagging them in your post.
Have a question about how to make this strategy work for you?
Give our team a call at [email protected] or call at (208) 509-7908