User-Generated Content (UGC) includes any form of content (text, posts, images, videos, reviews) created by individuals (not by brands) and posted on social media or website pages.
User-Generated Content is a successful pathway for businesses to engage the public while keeping their platform interesting. In contrast to using sponsored or influencer posts, which are purely for commercial aims, UGC is more credible. With UGC, the user becomes a testimonial: their contribution helps promote products, services, or a brand, taking advantage of social media, websites and blogs.
UGC streamlined after the boom of Facebook and other social media networks. Soon after the smartphone era started, people can create and share their photos and videos. With a mass amount of content being posted every day, UGC quickly became a marketing tool for companies and brands to utilise. It is an effective marketing strategy while keeping a low cost. SnapSea, as a software, provides its clients with an optimal way to source, monitor and promote brands through UGC.
Any content can be UGC, including blogs, web pages, images, social media posts and reviews. User-Generated Content is content created and shared by people who are not official representatives of a brand.
Visual content is one of the most common types of UGC and also the most engaging. Visual content includes photos, videos, memes, and infographics. Depending on the purpose of an account, you might see people post photos or videos to review a place, a product or a service. Sometimes people post photos to update their friends on what they are up to. With good use, brands can utilise these mundane posts to their benefit.
Reviews are posted on product pages or review websites and are an important part of the decision-making process. When making a big decision on which brand to purchase from, a consumer tends to rely on the previous consumers’ feedback.
There are many ways in which we can start conversations and engage in questions. People nowadays simply ask a question on their social media accounts and will quickly receive an answer.
We can easily find user-generated content in the comments. People love to share their thoughts and experiences. These thoughts can act as testimonials and feedback.
Hundreds of websites are focused on user-generated content, such as Wikipedia, TripAdvisor, YouTube and Instagram, just to name a few examples.
People land on pages in search of an answer to a question. To those who leave their contribution, they can be rewarded through prizes and exposure. To those who read it, the content needs to be informative. Interaction is a way to create a sense of community and collaboration.
User-Generated Content marketing helps brands be more authentic and transparent.
People today do not trust branded campaigns because it is purely for commercial purposes. However, people trust testimonies from other users.
Hence, we can no longer consider customers as passive consumers driven by 'old-fashioned' and static advertisements, such as TV commercials or billboards, because the user knows and wants to actively choose their opinion toward brands.
UGC improves brand awareness, helps reach new potential customers and builds relationships with followers. It also helps with getting precious feedback, creating interest and leading visitors to the call to action.
There are at least three distinguishing characteristics of User Generated Content:
It is public, original and creative.
When using UGC, you are opening a platform for other users to produce comments and feedback. Some might use photos and videos to express a point of view on brands and products. This process became an ongoing loop of interaction between the creators and users.
UGC can be of low quality, spam, duplicated from other sites, and redundant.
UGC management can overcome most of these issues by eliminating spam, evaluating content before publication, and setting up special commands for crawlers (nofollow tag for all outbound links to distance themselves from questionable destinations). To assess the actual impact of User Generated Content on SEO, different factors must be considered, including the size and characteristics of the site, as well as the effort required to manage content.
At SnapSea, we recognise the hardship in planning while simultaneously managing and promoting content. Hence we have posed a simple solution through our curation and management platform. With SmartCurate, we are able to curate photos daily based on specific hashtags set by clients. The tool filters out irrelevant photos and provides clients with high-quality ones. Other than curation, managing SEO and grow engaged audience come easy with SnapSea
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