User generated content is valuable, but how do you cultivate it?
By now, most marketers realize just how powerful it is to have a content marketing strategy. With enough high-quality content, you can reach more people, improve your brand reputation, and ultimately land more sales.
That said, producing all this content on your own can be extremely expensive and time consuming. So why not let your users generate your content for you?
This is the premise behind user generated content, which comes in many forms. Your users can contribute guest blog posts, social media photos, and almost anything else you can think of. So how do you cultivate more of it?
Build a Community of Brand Evangelists
First, you need to build a full community of brand evangelists. People aren’t going to create content for you unless they believe in you and your cause. They also aren’t going to promote your product unless they truly love it. That means you need to invest significant time and effort into improving your brand reputation and fostering brand loyalty.
Incentivize Content Creation
Most people won’t create content without a reason, so make sure you have incentives per content creators in your audience.
For example:
- Contests. Host contests that encourage your audience members to create and distribute content. You can give a prize to the best example of content you find!
- Rewards. You don’t need a contest to reward people who create content. Send free gifts and other rewards to people who create content naturally; it will encourage them (and other fans) to create more content in the future.
- Engagement. Sometimes, a simple comment is all it takes to show users how much you appreciate their content.
Spark Ideas
It’s also a good strategy to spark ideas for content creation. For example, when you ship a product to your customer, include a message that encourages them to take a unique photo of the product and posted on social media.
Do you need help with your user generated content strategy? Or your content marketing strategy in general? Contact us for a free consultation today!
