How A UGC Software Can Help You In Managing User-Generated Content For The Best Results
Consumer behavior plays a big role in business. What your target audience does and connects with should play a significant factor in the strategies and tactics your business uses to generate more sales and results for the company. That being said, one trend that has been undeniably effective is the use of user-generated content or UGC to market products and services.
Studies show that user-generated content results in 29% higher conversions than company-generated ones. So if your company isn’t using UGC yet, then you’re missing out on a lot. Taking a look at social commerce trends will show you that people tend to prefer UGC. It’s most likely because they appear authentic and thus easier to trust.
So how does a business or brand leverage user-generated content? Here are a few ideas to do that and what tools you’ll need to execute them.
Pick up Testimonials and Reviews
The most common and basic type of user-generated comment is reviews. People give reviews to businesses all the time. Capitalizing on the good ones can help you generate more sales for your business. Up to 93% of online shoppers read a review before buying a product. So you’ll need those reviews somewhere on your website. These are the places they should go at the very least.
- Checkout page
- Home page
- Product page
You can use a plugin to your website that will automatically aggregate testimonials from various sources, including Yelp, Google Reviews, Facebook Reviews, and so on. You’ll also have the liberty of choosing the ones that you want people to see first.
Get Feedback from Customer Support Channels
Another place to get more testimonials is through your customer support channels. Companies don’t talk too often about their customer service even if they have great support. So leverage any good feedback people have towards your support staff. If you don’t have good customer service yet, you should start working on it. Up to 90% of Americans consider customer service as a priority factor when deciding what brand or service they’ll be loyal to. At the very least, your business should have a help desk on your website. Check out this list of help desk tool options to learn the features of help desk software and how you can use it in your business.
Use Artificial Intelligence to Filter Relevant Content
AI has been moving business to a whole new frontier. Where people used to spend several hours a week on manual tasks, bots are now doing them faster. One new development in the UGC category is AI bots that automatically filter through tons of content online to find the user-generated posts that relate to your brand.
This helps save marketing staff and business owners significant time from having to manually search through multiple social media platforms to pick up visually appealing UGC you can use on the company’s channels too.
Build an Instagram Gallery on your Website
With the growth of influencer marketing, Instagram has become a powerful decision-making tool for online shoppers. People pick up cues to buy a certain product when they see it online. Instagram has started to serve as an online portfolio for brands in fashion, e-learning, jewelry, and so many more.
That said, it’s probably a good idea for your business to have an Instagram account filled with product images, quote graphics, and other visually creative content. Embed your Instagram gallery into your website too so that any content that gets uploaded to your socials will go straight to your website as well.
Create an Visual Lookbook
Brands are constantly using visual content to build brand awareness and liking. The quality of your visuals plays an important part in your marketing. But user-generated content serves another function, which is to build a sense of authenticity so people can trust you online. Consider the powerful difference between seeing a model with a thousand-dollar outfit in a well-lit studio and an average woman wearing that dress to a cocktail party.
Then you can go on and build an online library of those user-generated images into one online lookbook. Put that look book on your Instagram profile’s URL area or embed it to your website. If you have the capacity, consider doing a monthly or quarterly edition too to give your leads fresh content to engage with regularly.
Better Visuals or More Authentic Ones
Let’s address the elephant in the room: Not all user-generated content is visually appealing. Some of them are usable at best and probably amateurish creatively in the worst of situations. So one would argue whether using such content will harm or build up the brand.
At the end of the day, it really depends. But to help curb this problem, you can choose to direct your followers’ content very minimally and give them more guidance on how to best create content that they would be proud of and your company could use. You can also mix up some UGC with some of your own more visually appealing graphics. But when all is said and done, using UGC can be a great asset to your company’s marketing efforts. So in whatever shape or form you can, try to use this content on your channels at all costs.
