User-generated content, or UGC, gives brands the opportunity to have their story told by those who tell it best: real people. Interacting and elevating the authentic, genuine conversations that customers have about your brand not only empowers those who have them, but it also helps your audience gain more trust for you as a business.

Instead of simply allowing all of these great conversations to take place under the radar, use UGC to your advantage by building it into your overall marketing strategy. Allow customers to tell your story their way, then use your platform to share it with your entire community.

Here’s how to leverage UGC in your marketing efforts -- and why you should.

What is User-Generated Content (UGC)?

If you’re not familiar with the concept of user-generated content (UGC), it might be confusing to understand what qualifies as user created content. There aren’t hard and fast rules for defining UGC, but broadly speaking, it’s content that an everyday person creates online.

UGC can take many forms, including:

• Photos

• Audio

• Text

• Video

A product review counts as UGC, as does a photo of someone wearing your product, an audio clip with a testimonial, or a tweet or Instagram story. While the formatting doesn’t matter, the key is that someone aside from you has made the commentary about your brand.

Why UGC?

According to Forrester data, “70 percent of US online adults trust brand or product recommendations from friends and family and 46% trust consumer-written online reviews, while just 10% trust ads on websites and 9% trust text messages from companies or brands.” This goes to show just how powerful peers are in influencing consumers’ purchasing habits.

When you show people’s actual pictures and share their actual experiences with your brand, you’re helping to build your customers’ trust. It’s a win-win, really, because not only are you saving time by allowing your real-life customers to do the heavy lifting for you, but you’re also allowing potential customers to build a better relationship with your brand by seeing firsthand how others feel about it.

Leveraging UGC

There are many ways that you can leverage UGC in your marketing efforts and build it into your content strategy. No matter how you decide to make UGC a part of your work, try not to lose the authenticity. Make sure that your customers are always the focus of your efforts.

• Find and Curate UGC Online: Finding ways to identify and amplify customer voices online is really easy, and just a matter of a quick search. Dig through social media and Google to find out who’s talking about your brand, what they’re saying and the types of images or videos they’re creating about you. Search your brand name and relevant hashtags to find the content and creators that really shine. Once you’ve found ideas worth featuring, ask permission to share and let the rest of your community feel the love!

• Feature Customers: As you’re looking for customers and content to feature, you’ll probably find some superstars that are always speaking highly about your business. Continue to build a relationship with them, and create exciting new content for your online channels, by working with them to create original content. Invite them to be a featured customer on your website or social media pages, interview them to work them into your online or physical marketing materials, give them the chance to do a “takeover” on your IGTV.

• Incentivize Action: For customers who love you, but might need a little reminder to find their voice, it could take some incentives to inspire them to post on their own. Utilize marketing materials to show how much you value your customers’ commentary: An insert card in a shipper could offer 20% off a future purchase if a customer writes a review or posts a photo, while an email that invites the use of a hashtag in exchange for a free gift could be just the boost you need.

• Create a Campaign: UGC Campaigns are a great way to inspire customer participation. If you’re looking to spark interest about a new product or special offer, you can start your own hashtag that’s unique to the campaign and invite your top customers to try the product first in exchange for honest feedback or the promise of a social shout-out from your business page.

Great UGC Campaigns

There are many ways that companies utilize UGC to highlight the creativity of their customers. Here are a few of our favorites.

• Adobe featured the work of talented artists who utilize their tools with their #AdobePerspective campaign on Instagram.

• The #Aeriereal campaign encourages body positivity with inspirational images and messages of inclusivity.

• Beauty brand Glossier hypes up their OOO marketing efforts by encouraging customers to tag their billboard sightings with the fun and clever hashtag #Glossierinthewild.

• Wayfair inspires their customers to show their products in use with the #wayfairathome hashtag.

Support with UGC

While UGC allows for a really authentic and beautiful representation of how great your brand is, it isn’t always easy to figure out the best way to benefit from it as a business. If you’re struggling with how to leverage UGC in your marketing efforts, you don’t have to go at it alone. The team at Doukas Media has experience with sourcing UGC, creating UGC campaigns and generally leveraging it for business success.

Do you build UGC into your marketing strategies? How do you encourage customers to share their own messages? What has been your favorite piece of customer content that you’ve shared? Let us know in the comments!