5 Effective Ways You Can Encourage User Generated Content

User generated content can be a cost effective way of achieving results. With a number of benefits, including offering an engaging customer experience, building a stronger community and also helping market your company to a wider audience. 

Whilst it’s not necessarily the biggest marketing tool out there, user generated content can be a great way of gaining social proof, showing to potential customers that others have bought from your business or service, offering reassurance and adding trustworthiness to your brand.  

User generated content doesn’t just apply to reviews anymore, in fact there are a number of ways in which you can get user generated content from your customers or clients. From creative campaigns to user stories, here’s 5 of the best ways you can encourage user generated content for your business.  

Hashtags 

A catchy or memorable hashtag can be one of the easiest and most effective ways in which your business can keep track of your brand and what others are saying about your brand. Developing a hashtag for your customers to use in relation to your business, not only letting your customers get involved in a sense of community but also helping raise awareness of your brand.

Hashtags can be used organically if people want to get involved, but you can also encourage people to get involved by offering coupon codes or contest entries for use who use your hashtag, meaning more people are likely to get involved, showing off your business to plenty of others.  

Competitions 

Your customers want to be winners, which is why opening a social media contest can be a great way to create great content and create a positive experience for your customers. Offering a great prize to your customers if they get involved in your contest or giveaway not only means you’ll see an increase in people talking about your brand but it also is an ideal way of generating positive content. 

By asking your audience to submit photos or even videos of them using your items along with a specific hashtag is all it takes for people to start getting involved and with the added benefit of possibly winning a prize from it, you’re likely to see a huge increase in your popularity.  

Share customer photos 

It’s a good idea to find out what your customers are sharing about your business organically before you consider asking for content, by looking through Twitter, Facebook and Instagram you can get a good idea of what people are saying about your business including any images or videos they may be posting. 

With this in mind, it’s often a good idea to share these photos with your customers or followers. From retweets to a credited repost of an image from a customer, showing other people happy with the product or service they have received in a candid way shows to others that if your current customers are happy then they will be too. 

Social influencers 

Social media and digital influencers are a big deal at the minute, viewed as leaders amongst their social circles, they can be great to work with in order to promote your own product, service or business. Typically having thousands of online followers, beautifully laid out profiles and appearing to be very active online, social influencers are an important factor in user generated content marketing. 

Working alongside influencers who are relevant to your target audience means you can promote yourself to an audience who are likely to have an interest in your brand, encouraging more traffic and possibly even more sales.

Reviews 

Reviews can sound like a scary idea and some business may be put off by the idea of opening themselves up to bad reviews or criticism, however reviews can be incredibly rewarding. Reviews not only let you find out what you might need to improve on but also offer the chance to show off the great experience your customers may have had.
 
While you can use online review platforms on your website to feature reviews, you can also reach out to social influencers and bloggers to give a first impression of or review of a specific product or your company, not only helping promote your business but also helping your SEO ranking in the process. 

Whichever way you look to gain user generated content, it’s important to remember to only get quality content, having half hearted or poor content could have a negative effect. User generated content is a wonderful technique that not only lets you get your business out there but also shows your business to engage with your audience. With a solid plan you can have great user content and a successful business, that’s generating the results you really want.