What’s UGC and How Can It Help Your Business?
User-generated content (UGC) is a popular term, especially in the world of social media marketing, and its importance is growing. It’s becoming increasingly important to create content that is both authentic and engaging. This is where UGC comes into play! So, what is UGC, and how can it help your business? UGC is the ideal way to create brand engagement, drive traffic, and build that much-needed credibility with your target audience.
What is UGC?
UGC encompasses all types of content created by users or customers. This includes blog posts, reviews, product photos, and social media updates. The main characteristic of UGC is that it is created by consumers rather than businesses. It is genuinely authentic, unpaid, and often more engaging than brand-generated content. UGC is considered one of the most powerful marketing tools at a business’s disposal, and it helps to build brand trust, authenticity, and even loyalty.
How can UGC help your business?
UGC works by transforming a product or service from being just a consumer item into a community experience that is shared between the consumers. UGC fosters communication and interaction between businesses and consumers, thereby creating a sense of closeness and belonging. When customers engage with UGC, they are more likely to purchase the products or services associated with it.
Where does UGC come from?
UGC can be harvested from various community channels, such as review sites, forums, and social media platforms. Companies can also invite their followers or customers to share user-generated content with them directly or incentivize them. The key to using UGC is selecting which content to showcase, as well as how to repurpose user-generated content for specific social media channels and campaigns.
UGC is cost-effective
Many small businesses may think that UGC is an expensive marketing option because it requires investment in social media platforms and specialized analytics tools. However, the model is much more cost-effective than traditional paid marketing methods. Since UGC is created by customers, there is no need for the company to put in extra effort to craft a message that resonates with the target audience. This means that businesses can achieve great results with minimal investment.
Final thoughts
Today, businesses need to think like their customers. And UGC is essentially a window into their consumers’ lives, likes, dislikes, and customer experiences. The fact is, the creation and cultivation of UGC is becoming an integral part of the digital marketing landscape, and it’s not hard to see why. The power of social validation should not be underestimated by small business eco-systems. By mobilizing your customers to create and share UGC, businesses and marketers can strengthen brand reputations, enhance engagement across channels, and, in turn, increase traffic, sales, and even revenue in the long term.
UGC is a genuine and cost-effective way to develop customer loyalty and trust through your website and social media channels. As a marketer, it is essential to keep up with the latest trends and techniques in the space. It may also be a good idea to conduct some research on your customer base, how they use your products/services, and what they talk about on social media platforms to create an effective UGC campaign. Small businesses and marketers should appreciate the power of UGC and harness it for their marketing campaigns. Start by building lasting customer relationships that can create a lasting impact on your business.
Contact the experts at 98 Buck Social today to see how we can help you take your social media marketing to the next level.
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Have any questions?
We have answers.
Can you help me grow Instagram followers?
We partner with Socialboost to help build Instagram followers. Click the link below to enroll. Plans start at $59/mo.
What photos or videos do you use?
By default, we can use the photos you have on your website as well as utilizing the plethora of photos available to us within our royalty free library.
If you have photos or videos for us to use, depending on your subscription, we welcome you to upload them into a Google Drive folder and share that link with us!
Looking for custom videos? Some of our plans include videos or you can add them to any plan starting at $98/mo!
How do you mimic my branding colors and style?
As mentioned above, depending on your plan, we can use whatever you’d like to provide us! If not, we’ll resort to using your website or our royalty free library.
That being said, we can come up with custom graphics that suit your branding style as an add-on to your posting subscription.
$98/month for 3 custom graphics each week
$148/month for 5 custom graphics each week
Note: The cost of custom graphics is on top of your monthly subscription cost
What is content review & approval?
Content review and approval is where your social media content creator sends you a weeks worth of posts, prior to their designated publication time the following week.
This way, you will have the chance to give us feedback on each post in case you’d like us to make a minor edit.
Note: One round of editing per post permitted, depending on your plan.
What are the results I can expect from your posting services?
The idea behind consistent posting onto your social media pages is to keep them active with content that promotes your business solutions, educates your audience to showcase your expertise and to also keep things lighthearted, it’s social media after all!
There’s nothing worse for a business than to earn someone looking into what you do, only for them to see a barren social media page. To them, it may appear that you are out of business or potentially a scam.
We are often asked about growing followers and generating sales or leads. These are great goals to have but please understand that those goals are better obtained through paid advertising campaigns.
For more information on paid advertising, please visit our paid advertising services.
Do you use a posting scheduler and how do you get access to my business pages?
We are fortunate to be partnered with CloudCampaign.com to utilize their excellent scheduling platform.
By signing up for our content services, we will set you up with your own Cloud Campaign workspace depending on your plan.
During onboarding we request admin access to your social accounts using a secure platform. This allows us to manage the occasional disconnect when the platforms push out updates.
Furthermore, with your own workspace you are welcome to view and edit content at your leisure!
Why do my posts say “Posted by Cloud Campaign”
We use Cloud Campaign, which is a 3rd party app, to scale social media management and posting. When a post says “Posted by Cloud Campaign”, it is only the admins of your company page that can see this and not your followers.