The Importance of User-Generated Content in 2014
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Digital marketing is an ever changing beast. From new trends to new technology, staying ahead of the curve at a digital agency is incredibly important.
User-generated content (UGC) is something in particular that has been thrown around in the marketing world for several years. Businesses all over the world encourage users across social media to take glorious selfies and share them online, or upload their most humiliating stories for the chance to win a competition.
With the emergence of Vine, the ever improving Instagram, and the general hilarity of Snapchat, brands will be looking to generate greater brand affinity and increase conversions by incorporating UGC into commercial experiences throughout the new year.
So how will user-generated content grow in 2014?
Encouraging brand loyalty
Loyal consumers are always willing to share a positive experience across their social channels. By encouraging fans or followers to share their experience with pictures or videos, they can then be shared across a brand’s own social channels or website. With users constantly connected to social networks through mobile devices, marketers have the opportunity to engage with them wherever they may be. For example, post a picture of your current location to win a prize, or share a video of the awful weather (very easy in the United Kingdom) and win a holiday abroad.
Here at Parallax, we recently worked with a client over the festive period where users were encouraged to take pictures of Christmas cakes they had baked and share them on Facebook. Other Facebook users would vote on the pictures with a winner receiving £100 in vouchers. The campaign was a success gaining a large proportion of new ‘Likes’, website traffic and overall engagement.
Activities such as this make the brand mean a lot more to a consumer and helps them to become engrained in their memories.
It engages your community like nothing else.
By letting users generate and submit their own content, it can really give your brand some personality.
Video content in particular is something that has become easier than ever to capture, edit and share. A great example of a UGC competition is from ESPN Australia. Recently they ran a competition ‘Trick Shot your way to the NBA’ where fans can submit their ultimate basketball trick shot for a chance to win a trip to NYC. The premise of the competition was very simple – Create a trick shot, film it, upload it to ESPN Australia, be entered into the competition.
With hundreds of entries and thousands of Tweets using the specific hashtag, the competition was an incredible success. By allowing users to Tweet and share the uploads, the content was shared across multiple networks increasing the reach of ESPN Australia online.
It’s completely measurable
UGC can be the ideal way to both drive revenue and demonstrate value. Measuring the amount of content submitted, or the amount of Tweets relevant to a particular hashtag for example will tell you the engagement. Setting up goals from within Google Analytics for example can show you how a particular campaign has impacted on your overall sales or conversions.
Tools to look out for in 2014
Curalate
Used by big brands such as Urban Outfitters, J. Crew and Gap, Curalate is a marketing suite for the visual web focussing on Instagram and Pinterest. Using various tools, analytics, UGC, community and campaign management, it helps brands to tell their story through imagery improving engagement and relationships.
It features inbuilt tools such as content curation, allowing users to easily pick each piece of content submitted, simple gallery integration to your existing website, visual analytics and much more. This is definitely something that every digital agency should be keeping an eye out for.
Vine TV Mode
Following the launch of Instagram video, people said that Vine was dead. In response, Vine have launched their web profiles making uploaded videos really enjoyable from desktop devices. Not only that, they’ve just launched ‘Vine TV Mode’, a beautiful full screen mode where videos can be watched in sequence. This give ample opportunity for brands to tell stories through Vine, or encourage users to create stories. We can’t wait to see how it’ll be used this year.
What are your favourite examples of user-generated content? Give Parallax a shout on Twitter.
