UTILIZING USER-GENERATED CONTENT TO GROW YOUR SMALL BUSINESS AUDIENCE
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UGC: Today’s Low Cost, High Impact Marketing Strategy
User-Generated Content (UGC) has been compared to traditional word of mouth marketing, only better! Today, customers are encouraged to share their experiences with brands and companies online who will then, in turn, share these same posts, videos, reviews, and testimonials through their company’s social media channels. The exchange is a win-win scenario as it increases brand awareness, grows credibility between customers and businesses, and ultimately propels audience engagement—generating marketing buzz AND sales all the while! Bonus, capitalizing on UGC costs little to nothing making this strategy a must for start-ups and small businesses.
DETERMINE GOALS & AUDIENCE FOR UGC
For small businesses, UGC acts as a social media secret weapon giving power and purpose to customer food pics and selfies. This free content is created by the customer putting your brand or business in the spotlight. As with any social media marketing campaign, it’s important to develop your UGC strategy with specific goals in mind. While conversion is the end prize, growing your target audience is a good place to start when implementing a UGC marketing plan.
Brands should first determine a key demographic. Age, race, gender, socioeconomic status, region, and education level are categories to consider. Next, choose a social media channel(s) that best attracts this demographic: Instagram and Twitter for Millenials, Facebook for a large cross-section of adults, Pinterest for a female demographic, and LinkedIn for a professional audience are some of the top platforms on the list. Make sure your plan includes metrics such as Audience Insights, Likes, Pins and Retweets to help measure your progress. Many of these social media channels offer free analytics, a budget-friendly incentive for small businesses and start-up companies.
UGC COMMUNITY CREATION
Businesses should begin with community creation. Showcase your product or service through social media content, blogs, vlogs and be sure to include polls and contests. Your content should be engaging with a specific Call to Action (CTA,) a powerful hashtag and social media tagging opportunities that encourage followers to begin sharing their own posts, videos, reviews, and testimonials. Small businesses can greatly increase the size of their page following with the addition of prizes, discounts and insider exclusives in exchange for UGC. Keep in mind that your brand should always ask permission to repost, give credit to the post originator and offer something of value in return.
Fan-powered campaigns have proven successful on a variety of levels. Consider the innovative “Share A Coke” marketing strategy that created a huge splash across the nation. Popular names printed on Coke bottles quickly filled social media posts and tweets. Small businesses were watching and soon followed with clever hashtags of their own. For example, #TheSheJewels is a small business that specializes in hair scrunchies and jewelry. The company has a website and is active on four social media channels that meet their younger demographic. The social sites have an extremely small following compared to Coca Cola, however, this small business utilizes UGC every day, sharing posts and testimonials from satisfied customers. They frequently run contests and include surprise rewards in the packages of return customers. As an added bonus, customers see their name as a pop-up on the website celebrating their purchases. These are winning UGC strategizes that create community and keep customers coming back time and time again.
UGC SOCIAL SHARING
Authenticity is key among customers and potential customers. Nearly two-thirds of customers rely on endorsements and reviews when it comes to making a purchase. Many customers note that they are more likely to trust a fellow buyer when considering a new product. And the recommendation from a friend offers additional credibility to the endorsement. These are all important factors to consider as your brand begins the social sharing process. Through a quick keyword search and tagging, businesses and brands will be able to quickly find positive UGC to share. Small businesses can use these posts to create a content library to help promote their brand in the future.
CUSTOMER FEEDBACK AS UGC
UGC doesn’t just occur through hashtags and tagging, businesses should mine their product review page and seek out testimonials as well. Today’s marketing is a two-way street and includes conversations between customers and brands. Customers are looking for opportunities to share feedback and they expect their voices to be heard.
A great example of this includes a small coffee shop in western Kansas. Patrick Dugan’s Coffee House not only uses its social media sites to create brand awareness but also as a way to authentically connect with its customers as they develop trust. While they only utilize two social media channels, their posts are frequently shared and questions are quickly addressed. Simply tagging them or using their hashtags in a post will almost immediately be met with not only a response but also with a comment as well. They are also known to reply to reviews further creating that customer and business bond. In the short time that this coffee shop has been in business, they have seen great success and recently added staff and space to their business.
UGC DOs & DON’Ts FOR AUDIENCE GROWTH
Do use specific CTA keywords to encourage UGC.
Don’t forget to promote your UGC hashtags across platforms.
Do make sure you ask permission before posting and sharing UGC.
Don’t take credit for content that you didn’t create.
Do offer rewards and incentives for UGC.
Don’t ignore your UGC creators.
Do monitor keywords, hashtags, and tagging. Engage your audience by responding to posts and reviews in a timely manner.
Don’t skip the metrics. Analytics will help your business to know what kinds of UGC are working for your brand. Use this insight to reinforce or create future campaigns.
We know that small businesses and start-ups have fewer and limited resources when it comes to growing their audiences. Creating a UGC social media strategy is a great way to save time and money while building brand awareness and increasing your following. Through a careful selection of social media platforms, smaller companies can consistently connect with customers and potential customers proving this low investment, high impact strategy works for businesses of all sizes.
