Influencers are the new pop stars today. Millions of people want to be like their favorite bloggers: watch the same movies, eat at the same places, buy the same clothes. It’s difficult to underestimate the power of the content they share.
💡 Read Creating a Marketing Strategy that Works: Benefits, Steps, Tools
However, not only influencers’ content can boost your business. User-generated content (UGC) by ordinary people is another powerful instrument to attract more clients and become a trustworthy brand.
Just look at these numbers: more than 53 percent of respondents said that UGC is either “extremely influential” or “very influential”. And about 90 percent stated that user content influenced their opinion in some way. Impressive, isn’t it?
So, why not make UGC do you a favor? Let’s take a look at how you can use this type of content and what platforms can help you in social listening.
Ideas on how to use UGC
Use UGC in your social media
Probably, you don’t even know but there are already tons of content from users about your brand on the web. You just need to track it regularly and start sharing it via your channels.
Such user-generated videos or photos make your products look trustable as people see that it’s not a commercial but a real-life photo. If your friend uses some products, there is a higher possibility that you will consider it more reliable, right?
Use media monitoring tools, like Olapic or Yotpo, to track this content. They help to watch your back.
UGC for product reviews
Reviews are essential to make clients believe that your product is worth trying. And when these reviews are not fake, it’s 100% better.
When you find a review from a real customer, ask this person whether it’s possible to upload their quotes and photos on your website. Also, today there are media monitoring platforms, like Determ or Crowdriff, that help you find reviews that already exist on the Internet but you simply don’t know about them.
An AI algorithm searches for your company and finds the posts made by users about your products. Very useful and opens up new opportunities for you!
Review aggregators are your friends
Such platforms can convert people into your brand ambassadors and advocates. People use Trustpilot, Clutch (or B2B sector) Foursquare, or Yotpo for social listening quite often. These platforms help to see what restaurant to choose or check whether a brand is trustworthy.
Users share their real experiences and help other people make better choices. So, don’t be afraid to ask your clients to leave the reviews, but don’t push too hard. We think they won’t refuse to leave some nice words if your product has good quality.
Create video ads
UGC can help you at creating videos for Facebook and Instagram ads. Simply take user videos or photos and create your custom video ad.
To make a converting ad, you can use various self-service online editors like Canva, for example. Such platforms allow you to adjust your videos and to use some effects without any skills.
However, if you’re a newbie and need a more professional approach, and don’t want to waste your time on video advertising, you can always go for a motion designer option. There are platforms, like Perfomante, that will make a 15-sec video ad in 24 hours. You just send your brand materials and then get a ready-to-post video. Easy as that!
Okay, and what platforms can help me?
Determ
This service is used for monitoring online mentions of your business in real-time. You can keep track of every article, hashtag or comment mentioning your brand.
Determ makes it possible to track content related to your product in any language in the world — even Elvish and Klingon. Moreover, you can download custom PDF reports or export data from Excel files.
Amnesty International is one of the organizations that use Determ in its social listening activities. The platform helps the organization get a clearer image of the media profile of your organization.
Yotpo
Yotpo is an AI-powered solution for social listening. You can collect and manage customer content such as reviews, ratings, and visuals with its help.
There is a specific feature “Visual Marketing” which allows you to combine user photos, videos, and reviews and showcase them on your website. Just one click needed to get rights to use customer content in your interests.
According to Yotpo success stories, one of the clients managed to decrease the cost per click (CPC) by 72% by creating ad campaigns with customer content.
Walls.io
This tool helps to collect and show photos or videos that have a hashtag you created.
The idea is quite simple: you choose a hashtag and then users share their content. And voila, the posts get more organic reach. So, the followers of your customers will see the photos of your products.
The price starts from €0 and goes up to €500 per month.
Curalate Fanreel
Actually, Fanreel is one of the solutions Curalate offers to the companies.
The platform helps to source UGC and display it on a website using carousels or galleries. You don’t need to worry about approval to use customers’ photos — Fanreel gets you covered.
Such galleries help to increase revenue per visit by 45% and the conversion rate goes up to 31%. So, why not try them on your website?
CrowdRiff
This platform is created for companies that specialize in travel & hospitality topics.
They have an artificial intelligence solution that detects the most high-quality visuals that will work best for your brand. It allows you to put user-generated content on your website or social channels, as well as create ad campaigns with customers’ photos and videos.
CrowdRiff galleries lead to a better engagement rate and increase conversions. A great reason to try it out!
As a bonus, they have their own ROI calculator to help you with your marketing strategies.
Olapic
The platform makes it possible to display customer and brand photos, videos, and any other content. You can search by #hashtag, @mention, tagged images, or a particular person. Now you can manage the user attitude towards your brand in several easy clicks.
At Olapic, you can request photos or videos from influencers or ordinary users. Existing content assets become dynamic video ads almost at a glance. It means no need to buy stock photos or videos anymore.
IKEA used a user-generated content strategy and such posts got a 3.54% higher conversion rate.
As you see, users can create content that can drastically improve your marketing metrics. Don’t hesitate to use their content — together you can achieve even more!