10 Reasons Why You Should Encourage User Generated Content

The more customers and potential customers that you engage with, the more likely it is that your content will be shared, that customers will create their own content – and your brand will become more recognised.

You can directly assist in this process by creating interaction points – such as a specific hashtag or Emoji to use on Social Media posts, giving your customers digital wallpapers or banners that contain your company colours and / or logo.

You want to be seen where your customer base is, and User Generated Content (UGC) naturally targets this audience because it is provided by your customers.

Using tools such as Facebook Business Manager to collect information, and specialist analytic software to monitor mentions, tweets, posts, reviews and other forms of UGC will allow you to determine who your target audience are and which platforms have the biggest percentage of their traffic, allowing you to design your Social Media strategy accordingly.

As positive impressions of your business spread, you can create more targeted and optimised content to keep your current audience interested and influence new customers to get involved with your brand.

When your audience engages and reposts or comments, their friends, family and personal social circles will see their interaction, and feel more inclined to get involved with your brand themselves – generating an organic increase in interested followers.

User Generated Content allows visitors to create an opinion of your brand before they interact with it. Blogs, images and reviews will all play a role in influencing your potential customer, and depending on what actual guests have experienced - they will form either a positive or negative impression of your business.

By engaging with your brand promotion, and seeing it backed up by genuine proof – trust in general is increased.

76% find content posted by other consumers to be more honest than brand content.
(AdWeek)

By displaying and sharing User Generated Content, your customers will feel appreciated, valued and important – it shows them that you care about their opinions and experiences.

Even if their initial content was negative, if the response is handled correctly, the guest may become a loyal advocate of the brand.

By engaging with your customers and guests, you give your business a ‘human face’ which allows them to feel an emotional connection to the company, and grow trust in a brand they come to see as a friend.

The more you engage with your visitors and guests, the more they will believe that you are a company that cares about their experiences, values their custom and shares their moral and ethical values.

This strengthens your relationship with each individual, which in turn sees an increase in Brand Advocacy, more User Generated Content, and a positive loop of engagement.

Customers don’t just want to be given information and products that are designed to fit their needs – they expect it.

The more you can offer an individual, the more variety your brand displays, and a wider audience you can meet and entertain. This directly leads to satisfied customers, more recommendations and return visits, as well as appealing to first time visitors.

By seeing what sort of content your audience are promoting and producing, you can harness this information and use it for strategic planning for the future of your business.

If your visitors are interested in Instagram, then develop your Instagram channel and run competitions that engage this facet of Social Media. If your guests are depending on reviews, make sure you are active in thanking your positive reviewers, and help resolve negative issues – this shows your business as an interactive one, and generates a positive reputation.

Ranking on search engines is important – if your business is not shown in the first page of results, your chances of being seen drop dramatically.

With User Generated Content, you firstly have more content to be indexed by the search engines, and secondly – it is likely to have search terms and keywords that are directly relevant to your customers, because it was created by your customers.

The bottom line is one of the most important factors for any business – if you cannot generate a profit, then in the long term your business is not viable. The more potential customers you can engage with and interest – the more likely you are to increase your end sales.

For User Generated Content to work at its full potential, it needs to be promoted by your Social Media pages and website. It must be balanced – if you have negative content created, you need to address it and show your customer base that their opinions matter; ignoring unhappy customers doesn’t just drive them away – it actively deters others, when the unhappy individual uses their personal influence to recommend against you.

Your business also has the opportunity to drive the format of the content into avenues that work for you – by running competitions, requesting feedback or asking for blogs, you can directly influence how your User Generated Content is created.

Over 50% of consumers have reported wanting brands to tell them what user generated content to create, but only 16% of brands have a strategy in place.
(Adweek)