Posted by Vikram Rathod
September 23, 2016
For any business owner, the most valuable asset are the customers. User generated content is the authentic content generated by your customers related to your brand and it is voluntarily produced by the customers who had good experiences with your brand and motivated them to share their experiences with the peers. This content provides relevant information without trying to sell anything.
Because of it’s ubiquity, the customers have grown wary about branded content which typically presents itself as a marketing ploy, and so they easily tune it out. What do they respond to, is indeed the user generated content. This may include product reviews, site reviews, questions and answers and pictures of the customers using your product.
With the rising popularity of online stores and enormous competition, today’s customers expect faster processes, detailed information and personalized content. And, the user generated content let’s the businesses to tap into these expectations by increasing brand visibility, amplifying their buyers’ voices and building relationships. This, eventually helps taking your business to the next level.
Here are three ways that you can use user-generated content to grow your business:
USG User generated content is a powerful tool to build social proof and the most effective way to build trust on social media. If your brand enjoys high visibility on social networks, it increases the likelihood that your product or service will be on the top priority for your customers when they need to buy something. And if you build good relationship with your customers who’re not your website’s regular visitors, they are more likely to refer their family and friends to your brand at the right time.
You can run a contest wherein you encourage customers to use a given hashtag in the posts about your brand and you can gather valuable insights about their interests and preferences, while also collecting the user generated content which can be repurposed throughout various marketing channels.
Let’s see how to increase brand visibility on social media with social ads that influence your potential customers and broaden your brand’s reach. However, there is a right way and a wrong – it depends mainly on how much efforts you make. Often, social media ads stand out like a sore thumb among the candid content that visitors consume when they’re browsing their feeds. However, by including user generated content within social ads, you can improve conversions because they blend in better with the surrounding content.
For example, a Facebook ad displaying five stars review visual and brief, but a relevant review conveys the customer’s positive experience quickly and easily for those scrolling through their Facebook feed.
Integrating customer reviews section is critical to highlights your brand’s values and providing good customer services. No doubt, customer service is critical to business growth when you consider the fact that if the customer is not satisfied, brands lose more than 60% of the revenue they would have earned from that affected customer during the following year.
It does not matter even if the reviews are not good. Displaying negative reviews on your site shows that your brand is transparent and honest, and it is a good opportunity to let your great customer service shine. Because the fact is that, more than 30% would go back to a brand when they see how a business has improved.
Moreover, responding to the negative reviews also allows you to open a conversation with your customers and also shows interested people that you really value them.
Another great way to address your customer’s pain-points and influence their shopping decision is answering to their questions. You can answer the questions directly or you can also refer the questions to a past buyer to answer. If you refer your customer’s questions to past customers, it adds a social aspect to Q&A and eventually fosters a sense of community around your brand.
Today, visitors trust the content from other buyers more than they trust the brand’s content. Actually, more than 80% of buyers rely online reviews as much as personal recommendations. There‘s no right time to show the world that how happy are your customers, especially with the user generated content which truly conveys your brand.
By displaying your customer’s photos, videos, reviews and questions and answers gives your customers immediate access to information about specific concerns and pain-points they may have. This content can be shared across various channels like your social media channels, emails to your customers and throughout your website.
And, by adding customer photos on your websites, you can reassure your customers what your products look like in real life and exhibit how they’re being executed. This establishes great trust in your brand which tempts your customers about your products and ultimately lead to conversions.
User generated content is reliable, relevant and valuable, and you can use it to grow your business. It attracts your potential audiences’ attention and makes the online shopping experience more personalized, all by adding important relationship you’ve built with your existing customers.
Have you started using User generated content for your brand? Feel free to share your word in the comments below.