30 Jan All the Ways to Run a UGC Social Media Campaign
UGC (user generated content) has been a buzz word in social media for a while now. Personally, I am glad it is a trend that has stuck around and that many brands are embracing. According to a report by BazaarVoice, shoppers that interact with UGC are 97% more likely to convert than customers who do not. Brands see a 78% lift in conversion rates when customers interact with UGC. With those numbers, why wouldn’t you use this tactic? To get started, there are a variety of ways to run a UGC social media campaign for your brand. This blog post will highlight key questions to answer as you are crafting the perfect campaign.
What type of UGC do you want?
The first question might seem obvious to some; however, there are many types of user generated content that you can ask of your fans. For most brands, they want photo content of fans using or engaging with their products. A step up from this, and very relevant on social right now, is video content. Gathering video from fans is a high barrier to enter which is important to consider. Another type of UGC that many might forget about is a product review. Getting fans to write reviews of your product is another quality version of UGC. Whichever type of UGC you are asking for, it is important to keep in mind your target audience and the types of content that they are likely to create.
How are you gathering UGC?
The most common way to gather UGC is by hashtag. There are some limitations if this is your only source for discovering that content. As many social marketers know, hashtags work best on Instagram and Twitter. With Facebook’s privacy restrictions you should not expect to be able to gather UGC with a hashtag on this channel. It is also important that your hashtag is unique to your campaign, so that you are only pulling in content that is relevant. Another way to gather UGC is through a dedicated site. There are many tools that have file upload functionality for users to be able to pull photos and other assets straight from their devices. These tools usually also aggregate and display all of the UGC content in one place to act as a landing page for your campaign. If you want to gather UGC on Facebook, the only half decent way is to ask for fans to reply within a comment on your post or post on your page. This can get messy quickly so I would proceed with caution on this approach.
How are you getting permissions?
The main objective of gathering UGC is so that brands can repurpose the organic content that fans have shared. Getting a user’s permissions to repurpose this content can be a sticking point for UGC campaigns. The best approach to getting permission really depends on how strict the brand’s legal team is. Reaching out to the user, asking them to reply that they give permission and capturing that interaction is usually sufficient. If your brand has stricter policies, there are tools that will send a link to the user for them to sign their name to give permission. Obtaining a user’s permission to repurpose the asset is a key part of the campaign that can impact how the UGC program is run and with what tools.
What about prizing?
Personally, I think it is a good idea to offer prizing as a part of a UGC campaign. You are likely to get better, more quality results if there is an incentive behind it. It is important to keep prizing in proportion of the ask. If you are asking for video content, you might want a bigger prize then if you are asking for photos. Prizes can be the product, but don’t have to be, especially if you sell higher ticket items. When you add winners and prizes to your UGC campaign you will need to add in Official Rules or Terms & Conditions. Also, be mindful of how many prizes your team will need to fulfill.
Do you have plans to run a UGC campaign this year? If not, we would love to ideate the perfect program for your brand.
