In today’s digital landscape, branding strategies need to be innovative and break away from traditional advertising methods. User-generated content (UGC) is a game-changing approach when it comes to broadening your presence online. Recent studies show that 86% of millennials believe that UGC is a great indicator of how much people like the quality of a brand. Meanwhile, 93% of consumers find UGC helpful when they are purchasing something since there is something they can base it off of.
In this article, we will be able to look into the benefits of UGC for digital branding and provide you with strategies that you can use to increase your brand’s online presence. From successful examples to tips and tricks, you can find them all here in this article.
Benefits of User-Generated Content for Your Brand
What is USG? UGC is a powerful tool that can enhance customer trust, improve understanding and relatability, and provide diverse perspectives. Here a few benefits of using UGC as a branding strategy online:
- Boosts customer trust. UGC showcases genuine experiences from satisfied users, which increases your credibility and relatability. When real users demonstrate and explain the benefits of your offering, it has a stronger impact on your audience than self-promotion.
- Improves understanding and relatability. Presenting real people using and appreciating your product or service helps new customers relate and understand how they can benefit from the product. This makes your brand stand out and convinces prospective customers.
- Budget-friendly yet powerful. Harnessing the creative energies of customers to create UGC saves time and resources that would be spent on crafting original content. It’s a budget-friendly alternative that is sure to give you great benefits in the long run.
- Different perspectives. UGC allows potential consumers to look into the benefits and specifications of your products without having to use the product yet. Since every consumer is unique, you are for sure going to get different types of responses from different types of people, which can help you appeal to a larger audience.
By enhancing customer trust, improving understanding and relatability, and providing diverse perspectives, UGC can help your brand stand out in today’s competitive digital landscape.
10 Ways Tips in Making UGC a Branding Strategy
Looking to enhance your digital branding with user-generated content (UGC)? Look no further! Here are ten effective strategies to help you acquire and use UGC to elevate your brand:
- Seek out reviews. Encourage customers to share their thoughts and experiences through reviews and testimonials that can be incorporated into your brand’s digital narrative to enhance its credibility and appeal.
- Start a contest. Host contests that reward customers for sharing UGC, inspiring customer creativity while incentivizing users to share their stories and experiences.
- Create a branded hashtag. By making a hashtag, you can help customers find your brand more easily. This can be a word specific to your brand or putting a twist on your product and your brand’s name. Making a unique hashtag will also help customers and potential customers identify your brand. Whenever a person searches this hashtag on social media, they will easily find what they want and can browse through similar products or services of your brand under the same hashtag. This exposes customers to your brand and allows them to explore more.
- Encourage video content. Videos tend to have higher engagements with other people. Because of this, it would be best to encourage customers to create video type UGCs. You can encourage customers by initiating them to create “look what I bought” videos, videos of them trying out the product, or making video reviews.
- Create a UGC hub. Develop a dedicated platform or section on your website where users can browse, share, and engage with UGC. This hub will serve as a source of inspiration for potential customers and encourage existing customers to contribute their own content.
- Collaborate with your audience. Your audience can do much more than just consume your product and service. Your audience can help you give you ideas on making new products, services, and campaigns. By allowing people to be part of the process, you can encourage your target market to consume your product or services since they feel like they can make a difference and that your brand listens to the voice of its consumers.
- Integrating influencer collaborations. Partner with popular and trusted influencers who share your target audience so that you can generate UGC that resonates with your brand’s message. Influencers can create content that showcases your product or service, anyway, these can then be shared across your digital channels to drive engagement quickly.
- Utilize customer testimonials. Integrate customer testimonials into your digital branding strategy. Showcasing authentic customer experiences will build trust and credibility with potential customers, making them more likely to choose your brand.
- Showcase UGC masterpieces. People love leaving reviews on social media. This is usually to show other people of their proud purchases. Reposting and sharing the reviews of these customers will help create a community for your brand and motivates more people to create and share content for your products and services. Encouraging this type of behavior will help broaden your reach to new customers.
- Measure and optimize. Be sure to keep on the look out of how well these campaigns are going for your brand. With a variety of tools to your disposable, you can measure engagement, reach, and conversions. As these measures go up, you can see your brand pulling in more customers. Of course if these values go lower, you might want to rethink your current strategy and approach your market differently. Each industry is different so keep trying until you find what works.
Final Popstar Tip
In the Philippines, by being able to use user-generated content as a branding strategy, you will be able to save more while increasing your brand’s image. Many brands have been able to add user-generated content into their branding strategy and are a lot more successful now too. Anyway, by doing the same, you can also get your brand to grow.
By working with these strategies, you can encourage your customers to create and share UGC that showcases your brand’s authority and quality. Anyway, you can make your brand more visible and trust worthy in the market for other possible consumers for your brand and service.
There is so much that you can do with UGC and gather positive impacts on your brand. Being able to use this strategy will for sure give you results that will benefit your business in the Philippines.
Send us a message or contact our Team at contact@pop-star.me for more information on how PopStar can help you in your search and implementation of a user-generated content branding strategy.