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UGC interactionis on Instagram

32%

@

% %

44%Europeans

50%Americans

52%

your_consumer FOLLOW

115 likesCreate a simple, easily-identifiable hashtag. -

#HASHTAG #SHARE

your-consumerFOLLOW

115 likesCreate a sinple, easily-identifiable hashtag.-

#HASHTAG #SHARE

• 52% find photos the most appealing• 27% find videos the most appealing

UGC interactionis on Facebook

Consumersvisitbrand’s website

28%

find photos the most appealing

men women

27% find videos the most appealing

VS

TECHNOLOGY

Age 19-24

25-34

35-44

@

30%

@

SHOPPERS LOVE TO SHARE

The main tenet of any user-generated, or earned, content strategy is that consumers love to share what they’re doing, buying, and liking – Your brand simply must tap into the love of sharing and join the conversation. The first step to doing this is engaging with consumer content and finding ways to feature it as part of your brand story.

ENCOURAGE TAGGING & -ING

Make sure your brand has a simple, easily-identifiable handle and hashtag on social media to promote across channels (yes, print and in-store too!) and to make these tags ubiquitous to your customers. Include these on your website, emails, receipts, packaging, and more with a short call-to-action encouraging customers to share their content with a mention of your handle. If they’re a fan of your product or service, you’d be surprised what they’ll tag and share to be part of the brand conversation.

WHERE ARE THEY DOING IT?

While much of the social content out there is visual, some platforms are more conducive to visual content than others. Pay attention to where your customers are creating content that features your brand.

And, when it comes to looking for earned content, 30% of consumers head to a brand’s website, so make sure that you’re incorporating UGC on site as well.

ALWAYS GET THE RIGHTS

There’s no trust without rights. When selecting UGC to feature in your marketing strategy, your brand should use the correct methods to request legal rights on social media content. While tagging the creator is always helpful, to ensure true consumer trust, there are more nuanced technologies that can help your brand streamline and manage the rights requesting process, so be sure to do your research to select the right vendor.

FOLLOW THE CUSTOMER JOURNEY

Earned content has a clear role in the shopping journey, but understanding where it fits can be challenging yet vital to know. More than half of European shoppers like UGC as part of pre-shopping, or inspiration, phase of the customer journey. Experiment with UGC at different stages in your buyer journey and pay attention to where it resonates and impacts purchase decisions.

ANALYSE AND LEARN

While technology can take the legwork out of selecting the right content for the job, such systems also have the benefits of producing detailed data reports on the effectiveness of your earned content strategy. Such tech continuously improves to help your brand understand what UGC works, what doesn’t, and why. This intelligence can be applied to campaigns to help you expand your reach, relevance, and engagement.

VISUAL CONTENT WORKS BEST

We tend to process images more rapidly than words, with the bulk of shoppers saying they prefer to be inspired by visual content:

Short-form video content is rapidly becoming popular because of new formats like Snapchat and Instagram Stories, so it pays to keep an eye on video as a way to improve your marketing strategy. Integrating customer images and videos on social media, which feature your brand, is an easy and low-cost way to supplement your visual content creation.

KNOW WHO IS DOING IT

Understand the demographics behind your brand’s UGC creators. You may find interesting insights in what products are being featured and the style of content created. With this information your brand can learn more about how a product is being used, who is using it, and what type of content resonates with different generations or genders for more accurate personalisation.

BUILD TRUST

Many shoppers find UGC to be more honest than brand created content.

But remember to choose high-quality, trustworthy, and relevant earned content. Publicising or linking to the supplier of the content is key to credit the user as well as ensure the content is accurately reflective of your brand.

BE CONSISTENT

While branding and the use of images should be consistent across channels, your brand must also be consistent with what consumers want. In fashion, there’s been a lot of backlash against too much photoshop on models and unrealistic looks. Many brands are taking note from content featuring customers to better understand how they style something, or what looks resonate the most with them.

LET TECHNOLOGY HELP YOU

Finding, selecting, managing, and curating the vast amount of branded content out there can be daunting. Not only can it be difficult for one human to handle rights management, moderation, UGC deployment and more, but humans are also biased in selection. Luckily, platforms exist to make things easier – from surfacing the most clickable UGC, to deploying the right content on the right channel, consider how technology can help your brand in this process.

MAKE IT FUN

This might be the last tip, but it’s still equally as important. Yes, UGC can be used to improve engagement, personalisation, and your bottom line, but it can only do so if it resonates with your customers. Campaigns that require interesting calls to action, humorous submissions, or showcase people’s skills, are a few ways to keep your strategy FUN and something with which consumers want to engage.

• 32% of UGC interaction is on Instagram• 28% of UGC interaction is on Facebook

• 44% of Europeans consider it the most trusted source of information on brands and products, as do 50% of Americans

Your consumer

3 hrs •

4,350,057 views

Comment ShareLike

Your consumer4 hrs •

3,297,128 views

CommentShare

Like

TO LEARN MORE ABOUT EARNED CONTENT, SHORT-FORM VIDEO, AND INFLUENCERMANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY VISIT THE EXPERTS AT WWW.OLAPIC.COM

12 TAKEAWAYS TO ACTIVATEUSER-GENERATED CONTENTPICK UP TIPS TO MOBILISE CONSUMERS AND GENERATE UGC TO MAKE YOUR CUSTOMER EXPERIENCES AND MARKETING STRATEGY MORE AUTHENTIC AND ENGAGING.

Source: Earned Content – Transforming Ecommerce and Retail Marketing, Internet Retailing, 2018 http://www.olapic.com/thank-you-internet-retailing-earned-content-research-report/