Marketing strategies change as time passes; the goal is to make things convenient for you. But, talking about convenience, how is the constant pressure of creating new content every day going for you?
What if we tell you that there is a marketing strategy that you can use to collect content from your customers and encourage them to make more content for you. And by doing so, you attract potential customers, build brand trust and increase engagement.
If this concept is new for you, then you have been living under a rock all this while.
Allow us to introduce you to the concept called user-generated content.
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What Is User Generated Content?
When a customer buys your product, and after using it, they post about it on the internet. It can be a personal opinion review, a story, a photo, or another kind of content. When you use the content for your marketing purpose, after taking their permission, it becomes user-generated content.
What makes UGC effective is that people get influenced more when they see real-life experiences. So when it comes to buying something online, checking the reviews is the first thing that we do, and that becomes our deciding factor for whether it is worth putting our money in.
Now you must be thinking, why do we need a UGC platform for that while doing it manually. Of course, you can do it manually, but the internet is vast, and there are multiple social media platforms.
Collecting UGC is not one person’s task; you need a UGC platform that identifies UGC relevant for your brand, collects it for you from different social media platforms, takes permission from the customer on your behalf to use it, and finally provides various options to use that content.
It can be embedding the content on your website, using it on a social wall, reposting on your social media platform, etc. UGC has so many features; all you need is a UGC platform to get you started.
Here are the top 5 UGC platforms you should try to ace your game.
Top 5 UGC Platforms
#1 Taggbox
Taggbox is the best UGC platform that provides you UGC from 15+ social media platforms. The platform aggregates and publishes trustworthy user-generated content.
It has products like Display, Widget, Commerce, and Rights Management that have your back in all sorts of UGC solutions for various marketing channels and touchpoints.
They also provide you with 14 days free trial without giving credit card details so that you can try it before actually diving in.
#2 Stackla
Stackla is a visual content engine where you can discover the most engaging visual content for different industries like food and beverage, nonprofit, education, hospitality, retail, etc.
Its most distinctive feature is AI-powered content discovery and recommendations, enabling perfect content curation and predictive recommendations.
Visual recognition and geotagging are unique features for collecting data.
#3 Olapic
One of the main features of Olapic is that it provides high-performing UGC whenever the customer needs it. As a result, it finds the most effective content all over the social marketing networks.
It is user-friendly and allows you to create direct connections with customers by product comments, personalization, and showing the buyer’s entire journey on the user platform.
It is unique for its services as it provides UGC, influencer marketing, and short-form video, all in one place.
#4 TurnTo
TurnTo mainly focuses on UGC for eCommerce; it has tools like “one-stop for shopping assistance.” Visual reviews, Q&As, feedback, and checkout comments are some of the user-generated content it has to offer.
E-commerces find it a user-friendly platform as it is easy to export reports in themes they like and customize according to their requirements.
Even if you have a negative review, they provide guidelines and a checklist of best practices.
#5 Shortstack
Shortstack is your all-in-one contesting software. Businesses rely on it to create a unique landing page and organize contests, online quizzes, giveaways, contests, and other promotional activities.
These contests don’t just engage the fans and publish content by customers. They help brands gather useful information about the participants, which helps them remarket or write newsletters.
They allow you to customize your landing pages and emails to give your brand essence to make it more engaging and bring in traffic.
4 Ways To Utilize UGC
UGC For Indoor & Outdoor Advertising
Many businesses and brands have digital screens or signages inside or outside their premises. They use these screens to grab the passersby’s attention and gain various marketing benefits.
User-generated content is the perfect trust-building element to display on the digital signage at and around your property. That’s because before buying anything, people seek real-life experiences, and by displaying your consumers’ content, you are making the purchase decision period shorter for your potential audience.
Display UGC At Various Event Types
Many virtual events, hybrid events, and physical event organizers have identified the power of social media and have started incorporating social media walls during their virtual events to grab maximum audience attention and keep them hooked.
What would be more enriching for the event attendees would be a social media wall showcasing user-generated content. For the attendees, it would be like watching their peers and getting influenced by them. Not just that, you can also organize hashtag contests and display that UGC on the social wall to make the entire experience highly engaging for the attendees.
Embed UGC On Website
Before buying or investing in anything online, reviews or real-life experiences are the foremost things consumers seek. That’s why user-generated content has become a very successful tool for businesses to embed on their website. It targets potential audiences who prefer seeing real-life experiences of their peers.
Customers post content like images, videos, reviews, feedback, or comments that brands can utilize on their website as embedded social feeds equipped with rich UGC to build brand trust among website visitors and encourage them to make positive purchase decisions.
Create Shoppable Galleries With UGC
As people’s attention span is decreasing, ecommerce websites have started seeing a decrease in their conversion rates and website dwell time and an increase in their website’s bounce rate. The major reason for that has to be the exhausting ecommerce websites that are not even user-friendly.
Shoppable galleries equipped with UGC have come up as the ultimate breakthrough. Now, users no longer have to go through the entire ecommerce website to explore its products. Instead, they can simply scroll through the shoppable gallery that comes with a direct link or shoppable tab to purchase the product.
Above all, the trust factor that comes with user-generated content can also help brands boost their conversion rates. Along with buying, they are also providing visitors real-life experiences of their peers that build brand trust.
Conclusion
Every marketing move is influenced by how you can increase brand engagement.
People are relying more on real-life experiences to make online purchases. As a result, user-generated content has become a very prominent tool.
With this blog, you understand what User-generated content is and some of the top UGC platforms that provide UGC support.
As the old saying suggests, your customer is a god; in the pool of UGC, the customer is the god of content.