User-generated content, or UGC, has become crucial for businesses today. It allows them to showcase their brand voice and generate trust among their targeted audience.
With more brands becoming part of the competition, sharing the genuine experiences of real customers is the cornerstone for a brand’s success. To share the customers’ real experience, UGC is marketing gold and is more powerful than a traditional advertisement.
So, brands must make it a habit to collect UGC and use it as a promotional element.
Now, the question revolving around your mind is, “How to collect UGC?”
We have answered this question in the following blog to help you collect UGC more effectively.
5 Easy Ways On How To Collect UGC Content
UGC has multiple uses but is commonly used to showcase the honest experiences of past customers, which is the content gold for eCommerce websites. Thus, it is clear that collecting UGC plays a crucial role in telling authentic brand stories, which strengthens the business’s growth journey.
If you want to know how to collect UGC, we are here to help with the list of innovative and effective ways.
1. Collect UGC Through Social Media
Social media has the largest audience pool among digital platforms, and there is no way for this number to go down. Being audience-centric, social media accounts to a good amount of UGC directly posted by experienced customers. Businesses can collect UGC directly from social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, etc. Thus, make it a habit to utilize the power of social media and encourage your audience to share branded content that you can easily collect further.
1.1 Hashtag Campaigns
One effective UGC strategy is running dedicated UGC campaigns for your brand across social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Create branded posts to showcase your products and services. You can also reshare the customer’s posts containing UGC photos and videos on various social media platforms with dedicated hashtags. While creating hashtags for your post, ensure it is unique and relevant to your brand. So, when your customers post UGC related to your brand using those hashtags on social media, it will help you to assemble and collect them easily.
1.2 Social Media Contests
Incentivize the process of collecting UGC for your brand because why not? Everyone loves gifts and special offers, so run contests or giveaways on social media and encourage your audience to leave UGC reviews. By offering little rewards to your customers, you can get valuable UGC that helps you establish a positive brand image.
1.3 User-Generated Content Challenges
Social media challenges are the most trending topic today in the digital landscape, whether on Instagram or TikTok. Businesses today can use these social media challenges as a creative opportunity to collect UGC videos. Many brands today run such challenges where users have to try the product and share their experience on social media through video. This way, brands can collect UGC from genuine users and use them to promote their products on social media. These days, Instagram is full of customer review videos from Plix, a plant-based wellness brand. These videos are shared by people who take the fitness challenge run by Plix and have experienced beneficial results.
2. Collect UGC Through Email marketing
Collect UGC reviews from your valuable customers formally via email marketing. It is one of the excellent tools to engage and re-engage with the audience. Reach out to your existing customers with a personalized message to ask for their feedback, which is valuable UGC. Wanna know How effectively you can collect UGC using email marketing? We have jotted down below.
2.1 Post-Purchase Surveys
The best time to email your customers to collect their testimonials is after their purchase. If you ask why post-purchase, the experience is still fresh in their minds, and you will get the most authentic reviews. When you send your customers emails, don’t forget to ask them to share their reviews with a picture or video. Ask your customers to share before-and-after pictures of using your product. Be very specific about your requirements regarding reviews in your email.
2.2 Personalized Email Campaigns
Personalize your email campaigns so customers can instantly connect and interact with email. Start your email mentioning your customer’s name correctly to establish a personal connection with them. While you progress, explain the past interaction so your customers can recall the situation.
Add a call to action (CTA) button to your email. The CTA must be captivating and encourage your customers to tap and share their feedback instantly. You can also include a QR code or use Tagshop’s review hub feature to make submitting a review more seamless. You can even incentivize your email campaign with special discounts or offers.
After your customer shares their feedback, you must take their follow-up. You can thank them in your follow-up email or give them additional information like new product launch for early purchase.
3. Through Website Integration
Every online business has a dedicated website; if you do not know, it can be a great channel to collect UGC from your customers. There are lots of people who come to your website to check about your business and your offerings. These visitors can be an excellent channel for your business to collect UGC. To make your visitors share UGC, you have to make the website encouraging enough. Integrating the engaging UGC into your website is the best way to inspire visitors and collect them back. Let’s see how you can collect UGC directly from the business website.
3.1 Product Review Forms
Create a review form in which you have to provide relevant blanks of relevant information that will be filled by the reviewers and share UGC. Tagshop will let businesses create forms using the feature of the Review hub and integrate it as a QR code or link on the website. This makes it much more seamless for visitors to share their feedback and UGC pictures or videos directly with the brand. The process should be kept as simple as possible, user-friendly, and quick to fill.
3.2 Social Media Sharing Buttons
Encourage visitors to share your content on their social media profiles.
4. Collect UGC Through In-Store Initiatives
Creatively encourage your shoppers to share their in-store experience, generating UGC and sharing them with you. There are various ways to turn your physical shoppers into an opportunity to collect authentic user-generated content for your brand. We will explain two of the most effective methods to help you gather in-store UGC.
4.1 QR Codes
QR codes simplify the whole process of collecting UGC from shoppers. Businesses can display the QR code in multiple places, such as the storefront, packaging, or promotional cards. When customers scan the QR codes, they are redirected to the submission form, where they can share UGC photos, videos, and testimonials. Tagshop’s review hub feature helps businesses generate the QR code quickly.
4.2 Photo Booths
A photo booth is a creative way to collect in-store UGC from virtual customers. Set up a photo booth at your physical store and add different props to make it more fun for your customers to share their UGC. You can add your logo and backdrop to the photo booth to make it appealing and encourage more participation. You can offer incentives to your customers for posting those pictures on social media tagging you. So, this is a clever way to collect UGC for your physical store.
5. Collect UGC with Influencers
Please use your brand contributor to collect UGC; we are discussing partnering with influencers. Influencer marketing is the talk of the town because it is a clever and pocket-friendly way to spread awareness. Moreover, influencers are the UGC creators who are best at this work, so you can collect the best quality of UGC by partnering with influencers.
An influencer knows what’s trending and is skilled at creating content. By partnering with influencers, you can create high-quality, visually appealing, and trending UGC for your brand. Brands can easily repurpose such UGC to promote themselves across various marketing channels.
Influencers hold massive follower bases, so they use it to collect UGC for you through campaigns and challenges. Additionally, you can collaboratively run hashtag campaigns with influencers, especially to encourage more UGC for your brand.
6. Collect UGC by Running a Dedicated UGC Campaign
Launch a dedicated UGC campaign on social media if you are specific about collecting only UGC from your audience. This is a practical approach. Be very focused on what kind of UGC you want to collect, and mention clear guidelines and incentives. By running a dedicated campaign to collect UGC, you can inspire your customers to participate, share their experiences, and boost brand visibility.
You must also be clear about where to promote the collected UGC, such as on social media, email, and your website. Further, strengthen your UGC campaign by including dedicated branded hashtags specific to your brand and industry. Hashtags help brands track their UGC and make it easier to collect it.
Conclusion
Collecting UGC is not only about gathering mere photos and videos from your audience but also turning them into the most prominent advocates for your brand. When you collect and showcase UGC, you can create a genuine reputation for your brand among potential customers and drive their trust.
You already know how to collect UGC by implementing the abovementioned approaches. It’s time to catch the right shot and start collecting UGC for your brand.
Start telling your brand story creatively through the voice of your real customers.
