What Does User-Generated Content (UGC) Mean?

What does UGC stand for? User-generated content can be content of any type and usually comes in the form of images, videos, social media posts, reviews, or testimonials. 

When Coca-Cola brought out their personalized coke bottles, the world went crazy for them. Dubbed the “Share a Coke” campaign, this personalization craze took off all over the world with bottles named after people in every different destination.

To keep the momentum going, customers were asked to share pictures of themselves enjoying a drink with their personalized coke bottle on social media channels. The result? Coca-Cola’s customers stepped into the role of the advertiser.

This wasn’t just a one-off campaign or a fancy fluke.

Instead, it is one of the thousands of UGC campaigns that brought the business it promoted millions of revenue and a whole new image.

“The next wave of the Web is going to be user-generated content.” –
John Doerr, Venture Capitalist.

But what is UGC (User-Generated Content)?

User-Generated Content is defined as any type of content that has been created and put out there by contributors, users, visitors, guests, customers, brand fans, even creators. UGC can refer to pictures, videos, reviews,  testimonials, tweets, blog posts, and everything in between and is the act of users promoting a brand rather than the brand itself.

So, UGC sounds like another one of those marketing buzzwords, right? In fact, it isn’t a fad at all. It’s been burning brightly for a while (well, a while for the fast-paced world of the internet).

Let’s take it back a few years for a moment to Burberry’s Art of the Trench UGC campaign. At that point, brands were adopting the idea of their fans promoting their business – because word-of-mouth referrals are the best kind of referrals, even in the digital age.

Burberry asked its loyal fans to upload pictures of themselves and their friends wearing the brand’s iconic trench coat. All Burberry had to do was curate the best submissions, which they showcased on a dedicated microsite and their Facebook page.

When you consider that 86% of millennials  (Trend), and 68% of social media users between the ages of 18 and 24 take into account information shared on social media when they make a purchasing decision (eMarketer), it’s easy to see why UGC is so powerful.

What makes User-Generated Content Successful (and Why You Shouldn’t Ignore it)

Obviously, UGC campaigns have been a constant player in the marketing world because they are so successful (see Share a Coke campaign).

But why are they so successful? Why are brands turning to their audiences to share their products instead of crafting their own ads?

UGC Puts Customers Front and Center

Customer-orientated businesses are on the rise because companies constantly have to keep up with the changing trends of their audiences. In this fast-paced, digitally-run world, attention spans can be snapped away with the click of a finger. If brands aren’t catering solely to their customers, their customers will simply find another brand that is.

Online users are becoming increasingly savvy in knowing which companies are using slimy marketing tactics, and which ones are being authentic and transparent.

People Don’t Trust Marketers, They Trust Real People

This brings us to the next point. In the past ten years, the idea of the sleazy marketer has risen to unprecedented heights. The average Joe in the street is no longer impressed by pushy sales tactics.

Instead, they crave stories, they crave connection, and they crave interaction with other humans, with real people (a byproduct, perhaps, of the increasing amount of time we spend in front of a computer screen?).

In reality, we’ve been buying into UGC for centuries, but there are now social media platforms to make it more accessible across the globe. And, when you discover that a whopping 92% of people are more likely to trust a recommendation from another person over branded content, it’s clear to see how far the trust between people and marketers has stretched.

User-Generated Content is Authentic

In a study run by Cohn & Wolfe, 63% of consumers said they would rather buy from a company they consider to be authentic over a competitor.

Authenticity is so important in today’s online world. Customers are no longer passive consumers led by TV commercials and billboards. Instead, they’re active choosers of their own fate and want a say in who they do and don’t buy from, even ambassadors for marketing brands they care about.

But how do they choose who to buy from? They opt for brands that have the same values as them, brands that they can connect with on a human level, and brands that “get them.”

UGC Creates Community

UGC brings audiences together. Instead of it being an “us” against “them” situation, where brands are constantly trying to win consumers over, UGC brings everyone together in one big happy family.

People like to feel a part of something. In a 1986 theory penned by MacMillan and Chavis, there were four things that encouraged people to feel like part of a community.

1. Membership
2. Influence
3. Integration and fulfillment of needs
4. Shared emotional connection

Points 2 and 4 are of particular interest to UGC. Influence has to work both ways – members also have to feel like they have influence over the community, an element that UGC puts on the table.

Shared emotional connection is pushed through UGC, too. MacMillan and Chavis stated that healthy communities have a story, and this is what brings them together.

UGC is Cost Effective

UGC is all about the users creating content. In most cases, they’re unpaid and do it for a number of reasons, whether it’s to share their experience, build a connection with like-minded people, or have a chance of winning something.

This, obviously, is considerably cheaper than forking out thousands – or even millions – for prime-time TV commercials and Times Square billboards.

The beauty of UGC is that the users run the show, while marketers don’t have to empty their pockets on campaigns that may or may not perform well.

UGC ROI is High

According to ComScore, brand engagements rise by 28% when consumers are exposed to a mixture of professional marketing content and user-generated content.

Take the Starbucks’ White Cup Contest as an example. Customers were encouraged to doodle all over their white Starbucks cups and post their images as entries for a competition to find a template for a limited edition Starbucks cup.

Nearly 4,000 customers submitted entries in just three weeks, showing that people were ready and willing to engage with the brand.

Where Does User-Generated Content (UGC) Come From?

Knowing that user-generated content can be used from the very start of your marketing strategy to the end (even after your highest tier conversion), the question becomes: where and how do I get UGC?

Since UGC comes from your fans and customers, it’s a matter of finding their promotional content and organizing it to find the best content based on what you need it for. You can either find UGC (usually using social media) or create a direct submission where customers can send content to your brand during contests and campaigns.

TINT’s User-generated content platform can collect, organize, and find the highest quality UGC to use in your upcoming campaigns. Discover all the UGC available and  easily find quality content to use in certain parts of your marketing funnel or differing campaigns. Without a platform like TINT, finding UGC can take hours and your cyberstalking for customer content isn’t promised to end in results. You might be able to find some content based on brand-wide hashtags, but you’ll end up leaving a lot of UGC on the table that isn’t explicitly tagged with your branding.

Three ways to get customers to create user-generated content:

1. Motivate customers to create UGC during certain parts of the buying journey
2. Create beautiful experiences, physical spaces, and unboxing events that people are more likely to share
3. Ask customers to create UGC in return for a prize

Let’s take a look at these to understand when to use them.

Motivate Customers To Create UGC, or “Customer Generated Content”

Think of customer generated content as the part of your marketing strategy that you always want to be turned on. You always want customers to promote your products as they receive them and use them. The key is making sure that you’re helping your customers create UGC.

More than half of consumers (50%) wish that brands would tell them what type of content to create and share. Take a look at the most exciting parts of the buying journey and create a call to action for your customers to take UGC. Here’s where to start:

1. Immediately after purchase
2. When they receive their product/service
3. After they get the results from their product/service

Motivate customers to create UGC by giving them an easy tweet on Instagram Story to share after they’ve made a purchase. For eCommerce brands, add a note with the shipped product that tells customers to share their unboxing experience – and send them an email a few days (or weeks) after receiving their product asking them to share their feedback on social.

These are just some examples of how you can get customers to create UGC, but depending on your brand you can come up with the specific strategies that work best for your customer persona.

TINT can help you find and request rights to content your users and customers are creating about your brand.

Ask Customers To Create UGC In Return for a Prize

This is an important part of your UGC marketing strategy. When you run UGC contests, you’ll be in full swing asking customers to share their content in a specific way with the hopes of winning a special prize from your brand.

For example, Chipotle created a UGC campaign on Tiktok with a prize of 1 year of free Chipotle. They asked their audience to participate by making a TikTok video explaining why they should win the free year of Chipotle with the hashtag #ChipotleSponsorMe.

This isn’t a campaign that runs every day—this is the type of campaign to run a few times a year to increase brand awareness through the UGC created by campaign participants. You can run prize campaigns simultaneously alongside your ongoing UGC strategy.

Where Does User-Generated Content (UGC) Fit Into Your Marketing Strategy?

UGC is truly omnichannel and can be used from top-of-funnel to bottom-of-funnel content. Brands use UGC to increase brand awareness and sales because it’s one of the few marketing materials that work well at each stage of the customer journey.

Forty-eight percent of customers claim user-generated content is a great method for them to discover new products and there’s a 29% increase in web conversions when websites featured user-generated content.

It’s these statistics that motivate brands like Coca-Cola, Burberry, and Starbucks to focus on user-generated content campaigns—the more they can get their customers to do the promoting for them, the higher their sales. Better yet, the less time and money they have to spend on advertising campaigns.

When you have customers creating content for you (that you can use in your content marketing strategy, social media strategy, email strategy, etc.), you don’t have to pay for huge product shoots and campaigns, and the teams necessary to help them run smoothly. Campaign costs take a steep downward turn and brands can allocate those resources towards getting their UGC seen by a larger audience that wouldn’t have been available if they’d had to spend more than half of their marketing budget on campaign shoots and teams.

What about content generated by employees?

User-generated content isn’t just for B2C brands—B2B brands also see success with UGC in their marketing strategies. We can see this in the personal brand revolution that has taken over content marketing. Employee-shared content gets 8 times more engagement than content shared by brands.

Employees may get up to 10 times more followers than a brand’s corporate account and get more organic social engagement. These are the numbers that turn B2B marketers’ heads—customers want to see the faces behind the brand, including customers or employees.

What about content generated by UGC creators?

Aside from improving brand awareness, engagement, and sales, user-generated content also fits in post-conversion. After a happy customer has made their purchase, getting featured on a brand’s Instagram feed or retweeted builds the post-purchase relationship between the brand and the customer. It’s this interaction that furthers future customer loyalty, as they get to interact with the brands they love so much (instead of admiring them from afar).

When you open up your Instagram feed to UGC photos or see brands retweeting their customer’s tweets—it’s not an accident. It’s a strategic move to increase brand awareness, trust, and sales while decreasing how much money needs to be spent on content creation.

After all, everyone is an influencer.

How User-Generated Content (UGC) Changes Influencer Marketing

UGC utilizes influencer marketing to create micro-awareness moments for your brand that compound to increase conversions. When we say “influencer marketing,” we don’t mean spending your entire marketing budget on getting a Kardashian to promote your brand. The focus isn’t necessarily on huge mega-stars—it’s on the nano and micro-influencers that have engaged audiences. These are the average people deemed more trustworthy than celebrities turned brand ambassadors.

A nano-influencer can be a student with 1,000 Instagram followers that are only their friends, family, and acquaintances. When this student applies to a university and gets in, they become an influencer when they post an Instagram story holding their acceptance letter.

That Instagram story is user-generated content. All influencers technically create UGC and everyone that creates UGC is technically an influencer. With seventy percent of consumers trusting online peer reviews and recommendations more than professional content and copy—the use of influencer marketing is becoming less of an option and more of a necessity.

For example, when Delta promotes a happy customer’s tweets talking about their new safety regulations while flying during COVID-19, consumers are keener to see the customer talk about it than Delta itself.

You can also use professional influencers to promote your products. These are people with influence in a specific niche and a highly engaged audience (7% engagement minimum). 

A micro-influencer has 10,000 to 100,000 followers and has most likely worked with brands before. The benefit of working with these influencers is their expertise in the space. They’ve built an engaged audience and they’re able to leverage their social platforms as a channel for advertising. It’s their job to showcase new, relevant products to their audience that they would be interested in too. Using micro-influencers, you can create more brand awareness for your products, conversions, and user-generated content from the influencer that you can continue to use in marketing materials in the future.

A nano-influencer has 10,000 followers or less. They’re generally a tastemaker, a community expert, or a social butterfly, and that’s what has garnered them an audience. The pro of working with nano-influencers is that they might not consider themselves an influencer. They might just feel like a normal person who happens to have grown a decent social media following, and this means their profile is less of a channel for advertisement and more of a channel for entertainment. With nano-influencers, even though their following might not be that high, they tend to have higher engagement than micro-influencers or mega-influencers—which can result in more conversions.

It’s these influencers that brands can use, getting the influencer to review their products instead of creating a fancy promotional video that does it themselves. Seventy percent of consumers trust online peer reviews and recommendations more than professional content and copy.

Types of User-Generated Content (UGC)

With an understanding of where UGC fits into your marketing strategy and where it comes from—it’s time to look at the types of UGC available. There are three types of content that you want to focus on as you increase brand awareness and sales:

1. Visual UGC (Photos and Videos)
2. Testimonials and Comments
3. Reviews

Let’s take a look at these three types of UGC.

Visual UGC (Photos and Videos)

Visual content is the most common type of UGC and also the most engaging. For example, when Chipotle asked their customers to create TikTok videos explaining why their customers should be sponsored by them, they created a lot of engagement and a lot of visual content.

When a customer shares a photo or video of their new product on social channels, they’re creating visual UGC. Similarly, when a guest takes a photo of the sunset from the pool at the hotel they’re staying at, that’s visual content, visual UGC.

With TINT, brands are able to collect all of the UGC created by happy customers and use it in the future as needed.

Testimonials and Comments UGC

Testimonials and comments are generally going to come post-purchase when the user has received their product or the benefits of the product. For example, a class or program is going to want to get as many UGC videos of their happy students as possible so they can continue to promote their program.

Users with happy customers on comment-friendly platforms (like Twitter or Facebook), can use customer comments in their marketing materials. The key to using testimonials and comments is to ensure that you’re sourcing the most helpful for your future and potential  customers.

Reviews UGC

Reviews are left on product pages or business pages and are a huge part of product success. Seventy percent of consumers will consider UGC reviews or ratings before making a purchasing decision. Reviews are best left below products on their product page, where somebody at the bottom of the funnel can read the review so they can feel knowledgeable and ready to make the purchase.

You can also use reviews in your top-of-funnel strategies to create awareness for the quality of your products or services, but ensure all relevant reviews make their way as close to the buy button as possible.

So what’s the best type of UGC to ask your users for?

The answer is all three. You always want an incoming stream of new user-generated content that can be used in future marketing materials. Since those materials will require different types of UGC—having plenty of options for each type of UGC will be massively beneficial to all future campaigns.

User-Generated Content (UGC) Best Practices

Just like having all three types of UGC on hand is best practice, there are a few more best practices to be aware of as you start your UGC strategy.

Choose the most effective social network for your brand

Brands don’t need to create content on every single platform available to them. Instead, they need to focus on the platforms where their customers can be found. 

For example, a clothing boutique doesn’t necessarily need to put its time and resources towards having a Twitter presence—that time is better allocated towards Instagram. 

You don’t need to be everywhere. The best practice for choosing the best channels for your brand is to go with the obvious channel first and prioritize it. Then, add in other channels as your time and resources are able to prioritize secondary channels. Give each channel set metrics it needs to pass to be deemed successful. If it passes them, then continue growing on that channel. If it doesn’t, then look for other channels to test your content on.

Use different types of UGC on specific channels

Each type of UGC is going to serve a purpose in specific parts of your marketing strategy. For example, a UGC photo of a customer enjoying their stay at your hotel is going to work great on your Instagram and website pages, but a review is going to be ideal under your booking or product pages.

The key to a successful UGC strategy is figuring out what platform each type of UGC is going to work best on. Generally, you can assume that the platform the UGC came from is a good platform to continue to use. For example, if you get an Instagram video from a happy customer—with the right legal permission you can use that video on your Instagram feed.

With that said, the highest use case for UGC is to incorporate beyond the original platform and use it on your website, screens, email, other social media platforms, and even in print. UGC works well because it’s not company created, so as your marketing team works with UGC and adapts it to other platforms (email, websites, screens, events, etc.), they can leverage that same authenticity that made it work so well in the first place. 

Use UGC in content marketing campaigns

While UGC can be used across all of your marketing campaigns (traditional and digital), there’s a big opportunity to leverage it in your content marketing campaigns. This is because UGC is content. All you need to do is keep repurposing it so that it can be seen by a larger audience and increase your brand awareness.

This is where TINT becomes really useful. Instead of having to find UGC and sift through to find the highest quality—you can use TINT to have all of that work done for you. As you, or your marketing team, pull UGC to use in your content marketing campaigns you’ll be able to find exactly what you need.

When you use UGC in your content marketing strategy, don’t forget that each piece of UGC can be used for a different purpose. One customer might have done a great job of creating UGC that’s perfect for top-of-funnel awareness, while another customer has the perfect video for bottom-of-funnel conversions. Figure out what pieces of UGC fit into specific parts of your funnel so you can make sure to use them at the right time.

User-Generated Content Marketing vs Traditional Marketing

Consumers are considerably less passive than they used to be when it comes to advertising. They’re now more active in the decisions they make, who they “social listen” to, and who they choose to buy from and engage with.

These days, buying traditional ads both on external media and online is a competitive game (and, even if you pull out the big bucks, you still might not catch the attention of your customers).

Add that to the fact that consumers are actively choosing to bypass ads (take pay-to-play streaming platforms like Netflix and the rise of ad blockers) and are more likely to click through to a site if they see a friend recommend it, and you have a solid argument for UGC to augment traditional marketing efforts.

UGC works as social proof, too. One study shows that 79% of consumers admitted to trusting online reviews as much as in-person recommendations. That’s a huge metric.

Think for a moment about the ALS Association Ice Bucket Challenge. The charity challenge went viral for a few months, increasing awareness of the ALS Association (which not many people knew about beforehand) and bagging the company $100 million in donations. No small feat.

However, it’s also important to acknowledge the risks of UGC marketing. The most critical of which is properly managing the legal rights to photos. A couple of high-profile cases demonstrate the potential damage that mismanagement of UGC can cause to both the bottom line and to a brand’s image.

The Best User-Generated Content Examples from Brands

Let’s pull this all together by diving into some brilliant UGC campaigns.

Lululemon #thesweatlife UGC Campaign

Yoga clothing brand Lululemon wanted to bring their audience together and create a community around their business. They came up with #thesweatlife campaign, which encouraged their customers to post pictures of themselves in Lululemon gear on Instagram.

“We created the program as a way to connect with our guests and showcase how they are authentically sweating in our product offline,” says Lululemon brand manager Lesia Dallimore. “We see it as a unique way to bring their offline experiences into our online community.”

In the first couple of months, the brand notched up over 7,000 photos of its customers (or “brand ambassadors”) on Instagram and Twitter, and the unique #sweatlife gallery which was created especially for the campaign received more than 40,000 unique visitors.

Chipotle Cultivate Festival UGC Social Wall

Chipotle’s branded festival used UGC to bring its crowds together and promote the different elements of the brand and the festival.

They pulled together social shares, images, and videos onto a single page, where visitors to the festival could scroll through and relive their memories after the festival had ended.

Throughout the weekend of the Chipotle Cultivate Festival, which took place in San Francisco, the brand racked up more than 1,200 social posts and a whopping 3 million impressions. What’s more, over 37.5% of the visitors scrolled through the TINT social wall to load more content from the weekend.

Belkin Lego iPhone Cases UGC Campaign

Belkin ran a UGC marketing campaign that included people’s favorite gadget – the iPhone. Partnering up with Lego, they asked customers to create cases for their phones using customizable Lego blocks.

They then posted the images onto Instagram using the hashtag #LEGOxBelkin. This is the perfect example of customers doing the selling for the brand because this simple but effective marketing method showed potential buyers just how cool, diverse, and trendy Belkin cases could be in an organic and authentic way.

NASDAQ Omnichannel UGC

NASDAQ is a strong supporter of UGC content, using it across many of its brands including Virgin America, ETSY, Zebra, and Biogen. They use it to accumulate and bring together social content at social events and other important calendar dates.

NASDAQ uses TINT across a number of different channels when they’re running a big event, meaning the social shares get seen on large screens in Times Square and TV monitors all over the world.

“What makes TINT the best is it allows us to easily approve content on the go from the app,” says the Director of Integrated Marketing at NASDAQ, Joshua Machiz.

And that’s another reason UGC is so important. In such a fast-paced, constantly changing online landscape, content needs to be quick and on-trend. Instead of spending months and millions coming up with an advertising campaign that might be out of date by the time it finally airs, UGC marketing allows brands to stay on the ball and stay current with their customers.

Brands can constantly be in touch with their audience, which means they stay at the forefront of their minds.

The power of UGC is easy to see, and there’s no doubt that we’ll be seeing much, much more of it in the coming years as brands tap into the power of their audiences and take a step back from pushy sales tactics.

Want to learn more about how to maximize your ROI with user-generated content? Get a free strategy session with our team here.

The post What is User-Generated Content: Complete Guide to UGC appeared first on TINT.

Gone are the days of flicking through a travel brochure. Now, travelers turn to their favorite influencers for destination research, tap into reviews to choose accommodations, and research things to do on various different social channels .

TripAdvisor gets more than 50 million unique visits a month, showing just how many people actively seek out advice from the sources they trust the most: other travelers. 

Reviews and personal traveler stories now form a vital part of trip planning and, thanks to social media, access to information like this has become easier than ever. 

Source

So how exactly is social media changing travel?

1. Promoting Even the Most Remote Destinations 

In the past, travelers tended to stick to a small set of destinations. These were popular hotspots that travel agencies promoted heavily every year; places like Mexico, the Carribean, and domestic attractions in the US. 

It was rare for people to visit further flung places, particularly those that received little to no coverage in travel brochures and on television. People just didn’t know about or try to explore places that weren’t talked about in the media. 

But the advent of the internet and regular flights to more obscure places has meant travelers are increasingly choosing to visit more remote destinations. 

Social media is fueling this hunt for untrodden hotspots. 

A study by Booking.com found that social media plays a big role in helping travelers choose where they’re going to go. 

That’s not surprising, really. 

What is surprising is that 51% of respondents said they actively chose places that none of their friends had been to. 

This isn’t particularly hard: the world is a big place and there’s bound to be a huge number of destinations that friends and family haven’t visited. But to actively seek this out with the help of social media is a gamechanger for the travel industry. 

It’s pushing travel companies to promote more obscure destinations – in fact, the more obscure the better, in many cases.

As a result, there has been an uptick in the number of travel brands that specialize in trips to remote destinations, and if you search Google for “most remote places to travel”, pretty much every company has voiced their opinion. 

Alternatively, just check out the number of Instagram posts that use hashtags related to remote destinations and “off the beaten path” places.

Social media provides a platform for travelers to discover unique destinations they might otherwise not have considered. 

They might simply see a post under a hashtag of a single attraction in a country they’ve never heard of before and immediately put it on their bucket list. 

2. An Explosion of Inspiration 

Social media hashtags let us browse inspiring pictures of destinations from anywhere we choose. 

#Barcelona has over 54 million posts; even #TheGambia has almost 100,000 images. Type in the hashtag for any destination and you’ll be greeted with a vibrant digital brochure of things to do and sights to see straight from the mouths (or cameras) of other travelers.

This means that travelers no longer rely on travel providers to give them things to do. Instead, they use social media to create their own unique and personalized itineraries through hashtags, their favorite influencers, and review sites. 

Easyjet’s Look&Book tool is an example of this in action.

The airline identified this trend of travelers searching for destination inspiration on social media and incorporated it into their app. It allows users to search Instagram photos in the app itself and, after determining the location of a post they love, Easyjet serves up potential flights to that destination.

This shows that the travel planning process has been flipped on its head. 

Instead of travelers choosing a destination and then researching things to do and exciting sights to see, they do things the other way round and base their travel decisions around things they want to do. 

3. Is It ‘Grammable? 

Instagram has become a huge part of our lives. Not only do a large number of people turn to it to pass the time and get product inspiration, but it’s also changing the way travelers make decisions.

Before, travelers might have determined whether a place was in their budget, had activities they were interested in, and was going to be warm at the time of year they were visiting before they booked. 

Now, there’s a different set of priorities. One survey found that 40% of consumers under 30 prioritize how Instagrammable a destination is over other things. 

If it won’t look good in photos, it won’t make the bucket list. 

This goes hand in hand with searching for destination inspiration. The visual nature of Instagram means travelers are hooked on how places look and how they can impress their followers with amazing pictures from incredible places.

4. Celebrity Experiences Matter

There’s no hiding the fact that when a celebrity visits a destination, it suddenly gets more coverage and a surge of bookings from other travelers. According to the same survey by Booking.com we mentioned above, 17% of users pay close attention to where celebrities stay and look for similar accommodation.

Well-known campaigns like Airbnbs celebrity influencer campaign show this in action.

Airbnb is a brand with its finger on the pulse of social media trends. When they realised that travelers were coveting the places celebrities stayed, they invited household names to stay in some of their most elegant accommodations and share the experience on social media. 

The campaign generated an incredible amount of exposure for the brand and reached almost one billion Instagram users over a two-year period. 

Social media gives everyday people a sneak peek into the lives of celebrities, as well as a chance to live like them if only for a short period of time. This has impacted the way people travel as they strive to be more like the celebrities they admire. 

5. Switching Up Interactions With Travelers

Social media has given travel brands better access to travelers than ever before. 

They now have an extraordinary amount of information about their likes, dislikes, ages, interests, and goals, and can use this to create far deeper connections than a flick through a brochure ever could.

Through the instant and connective nature of social media, brands can talk to their customers, answer any questions, and create a following of loyal fans. 

Travelers are becoming ambassadors by sharing their photos, videos, and stories from their travels, which is helping brands attract new customers and improve the travel experience.

STA Travel regularly shares user generated content from its travelers, which has been proven to increase brand engagement and boost conversions. 

And now, with an increasing number of travel brands across a range of different social media platforms, travelers can pick and choose the ones they relate the most to. 

They can essentially create a unique experience that ties into their beliefs. 

For example, a traveler that wants a local, sustainable experience is likely to opt for a different travel provider than someone who wants a luxury, all-inclusive stay somewhere. 

Brands are able to create tight communities of similar travelers on social media by sharing the kind of content they’re most interested in. 

TINT powers brands that want to get in on the changes that social media has brought to travel. Through social media walls that can be displayed in hotel lobbies, to gathering UGC to share across Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, there are plenty of tools to help you get started. 

6. Constantly Connected

In the past, travelers would “disappear” when they went on holiday,

They didn’t have phones to keep them connected with home and they basically went off the radar until they landed back on home soil. 

Today, we are constantly connected via social media. Travelers can keep in touch with friends and family while they visit even the most remote places in the world. 

But, more importantly, they are constantly on the hunt for things to do that they can share with their friends and family. They can share a selfie they took at the top of a mountain in a split-second and they can live stream a video of them eating a deep fried cricket while it’s actually happening. 

While on a trip, 60% of travelers, and 97% of Millennial travelers share their travel photos. 

This constant connectedness has encouraged travel brands to step up their game.

Hotels now regularly invite their guests to share their travel experiences on social media, while activity providers encourage travelers to book on their mobile devices and tag them in any social posts.

The Marquis Los Cabos hotel in Mexico uses Instagram Stories to share its guests’ day-to-day experiences. This creates deeper connections with its guests and provides inspiration for people who are considering a stay there. 

Social Media Has Been a Game Changer

There’s no denying that social media has dramatically changed the way we travel. The constant connection means travelers hold more power than ever before. They not only use social media to figure out where to go, they also use it to find activity inspiration, to communicate with travel providers while they’re away, and to share their experiences as they go.

Social media is now an intrinsic part of traveling, and it’s time that travel bands embraced this new reality.

Are you a travel brand that wants to learn how to fully leverage the power of social media and user generated content? Talk to us to learn how we help the worlds most successful travel brands make the most of their UGC.

The post 6 Major Ways Social Media Has Changed Leisure Travel appeared first on TINT.

One study from Shopify analyzed well over 500,000 orders that came as a result of social traffic, showing the booming state of social commerce today – and the trend is only set to increase.

With general ecommerce sales growing at a rate of 23% year-on-year, brands are having to get to grips with the principles of social commerce and create campaigns that combine sales tactics and engaging social media activities. 

We’ve gathered together some inspiration from top brands to get your creative juices flowing. 

1. Madewell

Instagram has launched a number of features that help brands promote their products and direct their followers to the buy button, and shoppable posts are one of them. 

Brands are able to upload a directory of their products and tag any products they share in posts. When a user clicks on the product link, they are directed to an in-app landing page where they can make a purchase. 

TINT’s hotspots tool also allows you to tag multiple products with direct shoppable links.

Clothing brand Madewell makes good use of the shoppable post feature. 

But instead of simply snapping photos of their products and linking to them, they continue to show their audience how to build a lifestyle around their clothes. Their posts are all cohesive in style and design, and feature models in different situations that reflect the everyday lives of the brand’s customers. 

Madewell is dedicated to using on-brand, crisp, and clear visuals with plenty of user generated content thrown in for good measure. They also mix up their feed with an assortment of videos and images to create a shoppable virtual storefront. 

This attention to visual and highly shoppable content helped the brand to increase sales by 39% in 2018, and their social media presence was recognized by the Webby Awards, where they were nominated in the Overall Best Brand Presence category. 

How to Replicate Madewell’s Social Selling Success

The key to Madewell’s success is in their visual “stories” that reflect the vision around their brand, not just the products.

Instead of making your products the focal point of your posts, build a lifestyle around them and turn each story into a potential buying opportunity through shoppable tags, hotspots, and global CTAs. 

2. Nike 

Social selling doesn’t just allow consumers to buy products directly from their favorite social channels. It also describes how social media can be used throughout the sales funnel to push potential buyers to the next stage.

Nike does this particularly well. 

Consumers today expect brands to respond to queries within 30 minutes, and with more and more turning to social media to reach out with problems or questions, brands are turning their accounts into customer support hubs. 

If they don’t respond quickly enough or work to build relationships by starting and continuing conversations with prospects, there’s a high chance they’ll miss out on a sale. 

This trend is becoming more widespread, too.

In fact, a study by Gartner predicts that 90% of companies will be using social media for customer service this year. And, according to Aberdeen, companies that have a well-crafted social approach to customer service experience 92% customer retention rates. 

How to Replicate Nike’s Social Selling Success

Social selling isn’t just about selling products directly from social media. Building customer relationships is key to generating more sales today as a growing number of consumers seek out brands that they connect with. 

Start by joining in conversations with your customers on social media and starting engaging dialogues with them. Be sure to answer any questions that come your way on social media too. 

3. Burberry

Burberry has a history of creating successful social media campaigns, so it’s no surprise that they’ve jumped on the social selling bandwagon.

The designer fashion label has embraced the trend by bringing their products to life through short, engaging videos. 

Instead of simply sharing pictures of their products, they give prospects a 360-degree view of their goods – something that usually can only be captured in person. This is particularly important today when consumers favor online purchases over in-store buys.

Videos perform particularly well on Facebook. 

In fact, Facebook users will spend twice as long on a brand page with videos than one without and BigCommerce found that 30% of online shoppers actively want more videos from the brands they buy from so they can get a better feel for the products before they hand over their money. 

On top of this, a Google study showed that 50% of internet users look for product-related videos before making a purchase. Burberry gets ahead of this need while also building trust with their followers – something that’s incredibly important in the buyer journey. 

How to Replicate Burberry’s Social Selling Success

Creating videos doesn’t have to be an all-singing, all-dancing affair. Instead, you can create short, snappy videos of your products using just a smartphone and share them across your social channels. 

As well as pre-recorded video, you can also make use of Live video on your social channels to share fun, behind-the-scenes video of your brand that build trust and create deeper connections with prospects. 

4. Minimalist Baker

Baking brand Minimalist Baker is a hotshot on Instagram. They make good use of the platform’s Stories feature to share recipes and ingredient inspiration.

They essentially use Instagram to create a kind of catalog storefront by grouping their Stories into Highlights and encouraging followers to Swipe Up for more.

Research shows that the majority of branded Instagram Swipe Ups lead users to a shoppable page while some brands have reported a whopping 25% swipe through rate. 

Minimalist Baker’s use of Instagram Highlights is also interesting. This feature lets users at different stages of the sales funnel pick content that works for them or best serves their current interests.

For example, those looking for reviews can sift through customer stories, or those just on the hunt for recipe inspiration can do that instead. Rather than having to dig deep to find the information they need it’s served to them upfront, which has a higher chance of increasing sales. 

How to Replicate Minimalist Baker’s Social Selling Success

Make use of Instagram’s features and help followers navigate different types of content that best suit their needs at any given moment. 

If you have over 10,000 followers, you can use the Swipe Up feature to direct followers to your product pages and group together similar Stories using the Highlights feature to curate information in an easy-to-access way for every stage of the sales funnel. 

5. Aerie

76% of consumers say they trust content shared by “average” people more than content shared by brands, and almost 100% of people trust recommendations from others. 

These stats are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to how powerful user generated content is.

Clothing brand Aerie is a prime example of a brand that collects and shares UGC in an effective way across their social channels. 

They encourage shoppers to share their product images under a designated brand hashtag and re-share the best ones with their followers.

According to Moz, UGC such as this massively impacts consumer purchasing decisions, with many prospects actively looking for stories and content by other customers before they make a purchase.

How to Replicate Aerie’s Social Selling Success

Start by creating a brand hashtag and encourage past buyers to share their content to it. You can encourage them by:

• Including the hashtag on your social media profiles
• Regularly mentioning the hashtag in your social posts
• Sending out an email to past customers 
• Offering a small incentive to customers who share content under the hashtag 

You can take this social selling tactic one step further too, by adding hotspots or global CTAs to your UGC content to turn it into a shoppable catalog. 

Start Seeing Success With Social Selling Trends

As more and more people turn to social media for product inspiration, brands are having to step up their social selling game if they want to reap the benefits. Not only do the social selling techniques mentioned here increase sales, but they also build trust and create deeper connections with customers – what’s not to like?

The brands listed here are ahead of the curve when it comes to social selling and are well-versed in using the latest social features to boost their online presence and make more sales. 

Want to stand out from the crowd? Let TINT’s experts help guide your social selling strategy with UGC so you can make the most of social. Request a demo today.  

The post 5 Brands That Are Killing It With Social Selling Trends appeared first on TINT.

But just because people can shop from social posts, doesn’t mean that brands are making the most of it. Creating a seamless experience is important if you want consumers to get their wallets out while browsing your social feed. 

So how do you make sure every click takes the user where they need to go to drive the highest conversions and keeps them coming back for more? 

1. Get the Basics Covered

Before you even consider making your social accounts shoppable, it’s important that you have your profiles set up properly. This means updating them with your logo, branding, and a clear bio with a link to your website or store.

Glossier’s Instagram bio is an example of a good, clear profile. 

From there, you want to create a consistent social presence so that your followers come to know and recognize your posts. Make sure your visuals are on brand and you use the same tone of voice across channels – however, it’s important to note that different social channels call for different kinds of communication. 

Consider creating a brand guidelines packet and a tone of voice document, specifically for social, to help you and your team keep your social channels consistent. Within these documents you should outline:

• Posting guidelines, like what times to post throughout the day (check out this guide for the times that get the most engagement on each channel)
• Branding collateral, like your logo and colors that can be used on posts
• Tone of voice – do you want your brand to come across as casual or formal? Funny or serious? It helps to list out a few words that describe your brand here. This can be slightly different than your overall brand guidelines so that you create a more engaging presence on social 
• Image guidelines, like what dimensions your images should have and any templates that your team should use
• Hashtag guidelines, including key hashtags that should be used across posts 

2. Speak Directly to Different Audience Segments

Social media has a ton of different features that allow you to speak directly to different segments of your audience. The more you can personalize an experience for a follower, the more likely they are to have an enjoyable time and buy from you. 

Here, it helps to dig deep into different customer profiles and create a couple of different personas. Ask yourself these questions but remember to keep them specific to social:

• What is my audiences’ biggest challenge?
• How can my products help them get past this challenge?
• What are the demographics of my audience?
• What are the key interests and hobbies of my audience? 

This will help you get a better understanding of the type of social content each segment of your audience might want to see. 

And, by doing this, you can help your followers better accomplish their goals and meet their needs right away. 

For example, if you’re selling kids’ shoes, you can use Facebook’s Power Editor tool to promote posts featuring kids shoes to your followers that are parents rather than your entire fan base.

This works in two ways: first, the parents in your audience feel like you’re speaking directly to them – you know what they want and are ready to provide it to them. Second, your followers that aren’t parents won’t feel like you’re not the brand for them. 

3. Anticipate Next Steps

The best user experiences on social media create a streamlined process where the customer doesn’t even have to think about what step they’re going to take next. It’s a slick process that automatically carries from one stage of the sales funnel to the next.

This is why it’s important to keep the customer journey as simple as possible. 

Each and every post should have a dedicated call-to-action (CTA) with a single end result you want your customer to take. This might be “Shop Now” or “check out our new items here”. 

You don’t want your audience to question what their next step is. 

With TINT’s hotspots, global CTAs, and product CTAs, you can incorporate CTAs on all your social posts and track the results they’re getting. 

At this point, you need to have a good understanding of the sales cycle and what customers want and need at each stage. 

Source

Understand the questions they have at each point and preempt them by sharing content that answers those questions. 

Let’s say, for example, you sell men’s hiking shoes. 

Someone in the awareness stage might not know they need a good pair of hiking shoes for their upcoming trip but might be researching a packing list for it. 

On the flipside, someone in the action stage basically has their wallet out and is ready to buy. At this point, they have already decided they’re going to buy from you after running a comparison with other shoe stores, and it’s simply up to you to provide them shoppable posts to help them buy quickly. 

This shoppable post from Boombah Inc falls into the desire and action stage of the funnel. It’s aimed at people who have already decided they need a new pair of hiking boots and are ready to hit the buy button. 

4. Organize Your Content

Social media platforms make it easy for you to organize your content into different “buckets”.

For example, you can use the Instagram highlights feature to organize your Stories into different categories, like “shoes”, “testimonials”, “UGC” etc. 

This helps customers find exactly what they’re looking for without having to dig too deep. It also works as a kind of digital catalog and avoids your followers having to scroll through loads of content that doesn’t interest them – particularly if they have their wallet out and are ready to buy. 

This example from Oats Overnight shows how you can break up social content to fit into the different stages of the sales funnel. It creates an easy way for shoppers to sort through the information they need.

If someone’s not yet set on buying Oats Overnight, they might browse through the benefits, whereas someone who knows they need their next Oats Overnight shipment might head straight for the “Buy Now” section. 

5. Make Use of In-App Features

Every social media channel comes with a slew of features that you can tap into that helps make the social selling process a little bit slicker.

For example, Instagram’s shoppable posts feature lets consumers make purchases without leaving the app, while Facebook’s retargeting option in the Power Editor means you can recapture customers that got distracted but who might still want or need what you’re offering.

Eton Shirts remarkets to shoppers who have left items in their carts. Cart abandonment rate is high across all industries, but by tapping into social media features you can start to reduce the numbers and provide a better shopping experience. 

6. Provide Customer Service Via Social Channels

There’s a high chance consumers will have objections before they buy that instantly puts up a barrier between you and them. 

Social media is a great way to remove the barrier and interact with consumers pre-purchase and answer key questions.

H&M uses a Facebook Messenger bot to answer consumer questions before they purchase. This eliminates the possibility of customers going elsewhere if they can’t get an answer to their question right away. 

Top tip: it’s also important to make sure your customer service is up to scratch after purchase. Past buyers are far more likely to come back if they have a good customer service experience with you. 

You don’t have to implement a chatbot or use AI-powered technology, though. Simply being available on social media to answer questions can dramatically improve the shopping experience for your customers. 

Top Priority: Great Social Shopping Experience

It’s a no-brainer: creating an enjoyable social experience for shoppers should be a top priority. If you can do this, you’ll tap into one of the hottest ways consumers are making purchases today. 

The key is to focus on simplicity. Think about how you can create a purchase path for your users that has the fewest clicks possible before conversion.

Follow that up by implementing these best practices to attract new customers, lower cart abandonment rate, and keep past buyers coming back for more.

The post 6 UX Best Practices for a Great Social Shopping Experience appeared first on TINT.

While many marketers still struggle to get to grips with measuring ROI from social media, it doesn’t have to be overwhelming and complicated. 

Increasing the ROI of your activity on social media can help drive engagement, sales, and revenue this year. Putting it on the backburner might mean you’re missing out on potential customers – not something you want to do when there’s so much competition out there. 

We’ve put together a list of key things you should pay attention to if you want to increase your social ROI in 2020. 

First Things First…

Measure

One of the major reasons ROI for social is so low is because brands don’t take the time to measure their performance. If you don’t measure it, you can’t drive it; it’s as simple as that. 

According to Simply Measured’s most recent State of Social Media Marketing report, nearly one in five of the brands surveyed indicated that they’d never had conversations about social ROI. 

But, to successfully increase your ROI, you’re going to need something to measure. This means setting up a funnel which directs your followers to a place where they can buy from you. 

Map out how you see people making a purchase via social media, whether that’s through premium content on a landing page and then a nurturing email sequence, or by linking directly to product pages with a social media discount. 

Define the Metrics that Matter to Your Business

What social media metrics are actually important in driving revenue and sales for your business? This might vary depending on what kind of business you run and the social activities you carry out.

You might choose to track reach, audience engagement, site traffic, leads generation, sign ups and conversions, or revenue generated. 

Lookback

Once you know what you want to measure, dig into your existing metrics to look for clues to tactics that are already driving your desired outcomes. 

Know Your Audience

If you don’t know who is engaging with your content, you won’t have any context behind your metrics. Explore the built-in analytics of your social networks to get key demographic data on your audience. 

Measure Your Results

Measuring your ROI is important so that you know what’s working and what’s not.

Setting up UTM tracking codes is an effective way to do this. These are snippets of simple code that you can tack onto the end of a URL to track the performance of it. You can track the source, medium, campaign, term, and content depending on which of these tie in best with your goals.  

To set up UTM tracking codes, you’ll need to have Google Analytics installed. Then: 

1. VIsit Google’s free URL builder page
2. Create a unique URL for each ad or link 
3. Check and measure your success in the Acquisitions > Campaigns section in Google Analytics 

We recommend using a tool like bit.ly to create shorter URLs so that your visitors don’t know you’re using UTM codes to track performance. 

TINT’s hotspots and Global CTAs allow you to embed your unique UTM codes so that you can track the performance of shoppable content. This will help you seamlessly track your campaigns over time. 

Now that you know what is important and how to track, here are a few ways to drive social engagement.

1. Social Listening

Analyzing what other people in your industry are talking about on social media and tracking what posts are getting the most engagement can help you gain insight into the type of content your audience wants and needs. 

You can then apply relevant tactics to your own channels depending on the metrics that matter the most to you.

Social listening can also help you  determine which social platforms have the most engaged users in your niche.

How to Put This Into Action: 

Use a tool like BuzzSumo, which can help you analyze what content performs best for any topic as well as provide insights into which topics get the most shares. In addition, you can see which social network is the most active for certain keywords.

The topic of conversational marketing seems to get the most engagement when shared on Facebook. 

2. Partner Up With Micro-Influencers

Gone are the days of paying huge sums of money to get a mention on big-name celebrity social accounts.

Today, it’s all about the micro-influencer or nano-influencer.

These are niche social accounts with between 1,000 and 10,000 followers. They tend to have hyper-engaged audiences that are interested in a specific topic and have double the engagement rate of accounts with over 10,000 followers. 

Micro-influencers are so effective at generating engagement and driving traffic and sales because people still relate to them as everyday consumers and peers. And, when you learn that 70% of millennials are influenced by the recommendations of their peers, it’s easy to see why partnering with micro-influencers can be really impactful. 

Identify key micro-influencers in your industry by scouring relevant hashtags on social media and reach out to them about partnering up.

Christa Maria regularly posts content under #ecoclothing that gets good engagement and she has less than 10,000 followers. 

3. Use UGC to Show Authenticity 

92% of people are more likely to trust a recommendation from another person over branded content, which means they’re more likely to buy something after seeing it in a user generated image. 

But don’t forget to track your efforts!

If you aren’t sold on this idea, run an A/B test of a brand image alongside a UGC image from one of your customers and see which one drives better results. A huge part of increasing your ROI is figuring out what works and what doesn’t, so it’s vital to measure any new ventures like this so you can compare the results to your traditional methods.

How to Put This Into Action: 

Create a branded hashtag and encourage or incentivize your audience to share their images and videos of your products. You can then tap into the library of content to share across your social channels, garnering higher engagement levels and more sales. 

Boohoo encourages its customers to share their clothing pics under the hashtag #boohoobabes. It then reshares the best posts on its feed. 

4. Retargeting

It takes around seven touchpoints for a consumer to make a purchase from a brand. This means you probably need to have far more interactions with prospects than you think.

A touchpoint can be anything from showing up in their Instagram feed to a call with customer support – it’s basically any time a lead has seen your brand or interacts with it. 

Retargeting is a great way to show up in the social feeds of consumers that already know who you are. Perhaps they’ve already been on your website, or perhaps they’re on your email list but need a few more touchpoints to push them in the right direction. 

Research has shown that incorporating UGC into paid social ads and remarketing campaigns yield better results and can really superpower your ROI. 

How to Put This Into Action:

Gather together relevant UGC, whether it’s customer images or reviews, and weave them into your social ads like Feeling The Street does below. 

Make sure your social ads target people that have already engaged with your brand in some way. For example, Facebook lets you upload your email list or target people that have visited a certain page on your website.

5. Engage Individually With Your Audience

Customers love personal attention and they like to feel heard by brands. You can tap into this by responding to individual comments and engaging directly with specific followers on social media.

This not only builds trust and respect, but it means people will be far more likely to do business with you. 

Research from Epsilon shows that consumers are more likely to buy from a brand if they offer a personalized experience, and interacting directly with them takes this one step further. 

How to Put This Into Action:

Actively respond to public customer comments and messages on your social channels. You can also dive into discussions that are already taking place around your brand and share your thoughts and opinions on trending (but relevant) topics.

Innocent Smoothies is really good and engaging their customers individually on Twitter. 

6. Create More Engaging Content 

Increasing your social media ROI can be as simple as creating content that really drives engagement. In fact, content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing, and costs 62% less.

So not only will you generate more leads, but you’ll cut your costs and significantly boost ROI. 

Consistently sharing great content will keep you at the front of consumer minds and position you as an expert in your industry without having to sacrifice a large chunk of money. 

How to Put This Into Action:

It’s important that you tie content creation to your findings from your social listening activities and make sure everything you create taps into key customer pain points.

Scour your competitors’ channels to see the kinds of content they’re creating, ask your followers what kind of content they want to see, and measure which content performs best so you can create more of it. 

7. Make Use of Shoppable Features

Social media channels now have tons of shoppable features. For example, Instagram’s Shoppable Posts allow followers to buy direct through the platform, the Swipe Up feature on Stories lets you link to specific landing pages, and Facebook’s CTAs mean you can collect customer information in-app. 

If you’re not already using these features, you might be leaving money on the table. 

The stats don’t lie. According to studies, some brands can increase traffic to their site by 1,416% by using Shoppable posts.

How to Put This Into Action:With TINT, you can incorporate hotspots, global CTAs, and product CTAs into all your social posts. This means you can add trackable links to your content to specifically see where sales and revenue is coming from. 

The North Face regularly uses the Swipe Up feature in their Instagram Stories to direct followers to specific products. 

8. Go Behind-the-Scenes

Studies have shown that consumers are more likely to buy from brands that have the same beliefs as them. This is where showing off your personality in your social posts can really work in your favor.

It’s an easy way to increase your ROI, as it doesn’t cost much at all to film a short video of a product being made or to share a quick photo of your team at work. However, the results can be fantastic as this works to build the personality of your brand, make your company more real and build connection with your followers.

How to Put This Into Action:

Leverage social media features like Live video, Stories, and posts to dig deeper into your brand story and give followers a sneak peek into the behind-the-scenes of your brand.

The Charles Hotel shares a behind-the-scenes shot from a staged photoshoot. 

Let Social Media Do the Hard Work

Social media has the potential to impact your sales in 2020. Try a few of these strategies to see what works best for your customers.  

Don’t forget to use these tips to make measuring the ROI of your social activity a breeze and will help you have a lucrative 2020 where social media does all the hard work for you. 

The post 8 Ways to Skyrocket Your ROI With Social Media in 2020 appeared first on TINT.

A few years ago, some marketers thought that user-generated content wouldn’t leave a significant mark. 

Today, user-generated content (UGC) is a powerful weapon that every marketer needs to have in their arsenal. Let’s take a look at these amazing user-generated content statistics to see why you’ll want to take advantage of UGC.

Looking for the latest stats? Get the latest UGC and community research 

Key UGC Stats to Remember

1. Ads based on user-generated content receive 4 times higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost-per-click compared to average ads.
2. More than half of consumers (50%) wish that brands would tell them what type of content to create and share.
3. As few as 16% of brands have a strategy regarding user-generated content.
4. More than 86% of companies today use user-generated content as part of their marketing strategy.   
5. When users create and share content on social media channels, they get 28% higher engagement compared to standard company posts.

Inbound Marketing and UGC

6. One-quarter of search results (25%) for the world’s biggest brands are links to user-generated content.
7. Websites with featured user content saw a 20% increase in return visitors. Additionally, these websites recorded a whopping 90% increase in time spent on-site.
8. Almost half of customers (48%) claim that user-generated content is a great method for them to discover new products and this can be accelerated with product sampling.        
9. It is estimated that companies can receive a traffic increase of 26% when they share customer reviews on Twitter.
10. Almost half of marketing professionals (48%) think that content created by customers helps humanize their marketing.
11. 34% of TINT users and 45% of marketers agree that user-generated content helps improve social media campaigns.
12. 41% of marketers rank content engagement as their top KPI.
13. On average, UGC can save brands the expense of a dedicated content producer ($72,000).
14. For 43% of TINT users and 42% of non-TINT users, UGC is an essential component of their marketing strategy.
15. User-generated content drives a 73% increase in email click-through-rates.

User-generated Content and Buying Decisions Stats

User-generated content is proven to help drive conversions and sales.

16. There has been an increase of 29% in web conversions when websites featured user-generated content.
17. A whopping 84% of millennial consumers claim that user-generated content on company websites has influenced the way they do online shopping to some extent.
18. A significant 70% of consumers will consider UGC reviews or ratings before making a purchasing decision. At least 41% of them will read four to seven UGC reviews to gain important insights on a product. 
19. On-site consumer reviews can increase conversions by 74%.  
20. A significant 64% of consumers will not only strongly consider online reviews, but they will also actively seek them out before making a final purchasing decision.
21. 71% of consumers state that online reviews are important when considering buying electronics, appliances, home décor, and others.
22. A staggering 93% of customers believe user-generated content is very helpful when making a purchasing decision.
23. User-generated content is 20% more influential than any other kind of media when it comes to millennial buyers.   
24. Brands saw over a 50% conversion rate for visitors to pages featuring UGC. **

• **(“VMLY&R used TINT as part of a campaign to drive engagement for beIN SPORTS. Through their use of Experience Builder, they ran a contest to give away GOALden tickets. 5 trips during the season to watch beloved soccer teams in Europe. To date, the campaign has seen an almost 50% conversion rate for all visitors to the experience builder page.)

B2B Marketing and UGC

25. Brand messages are re-shared up to 24 times more when distributed by your employees instead of a brand.
26. Employee-shared content gets 8 times more engagement than content shared by brands.
27. An employee advocacy program with 1,000 participants can generate up to $1,900,000 in advertising value, according to a study.
28. Employees may get up to 10 times more followers than a brand’s corporate account, as well as get more organic social engagement. 

UGC doesn’t only work in the B2C industry. On the contrary, B2B companies can also make great use of this type of content.

Stats on Customer Trust and User-generated Content

29.  A whopping 70% of consumers trust online peer reviews and recommendations more than professional content and copy.
30. Almost half of the millennial consumers (44%) trust experienced consumers over family and friends when it comes to making a purchasing decision.
31. A staggering 87% of brands take advantage of user-generated content with the aim to share more authentic content, and 72% believe that it helps them engage their audience better.   
32. Finally, 92% of consumers trust recommendations from other people, even if it’s people they don’t know.
33. 75% of respondents claim that UGC makes content more authentic.

Gen Z and UGC

34. 35% of Gen Z believes that in the next 3-5 years, user-generated content will have more credibility than content created by a company or independent source.
35. In the near future (3-5 years), smartphone usage will lead to an increase in the number of consumers who prefer to watch UGC on mobile phones by 12%. 
36. 84% of this generation are more likely to trust a company if it uses actual customers in its ads. 
37. Gen Z’s attention is most effectively attracted by brand influencers who post authentic UGC.

Millennial Consumers and Content Generation

38. Millennial consumers (25+ years of age) are considered to be the biggest content drivers. They contribute to over 70% of all UGC for ambassador marketing.
39. Millennial consumers spend 18 hours a day engaged in various types of media. 30% of that time is spent watching user-generated media.
40. Millennial consumers believe that user-generated content is 35% more memorable than other media.   
41. This may come as a surprise, but only 1% of millennial consumers claim that a compelling advertisement would make them trust a brand more.

User-generated Content and Video Marketing

42. Almost half of the people (45%) watch over an hour of Facebook or YouTube videos on a weekly basis.
43. Engagement increases by 28% when consumers can view a mixture of user-generated product videos and official brand-authored content.

Case Studies on User-generated Content

44. A UGC-centered campaign from Burberry saw a 50% increase in eCommerce sales year-over-year.   
45. Tourism Queensland ran a campaign encouraging users to apply for the “best job in the world” and be a caretaker for a tropical island, with the aim to increase social activity and exposure. More than 35,000 people created video applications, resulting in $368 million worth of media coverage, 8.4 million unique website visits, and 55 million page views.
46. Using social media channels as their main voting platforms in a campaign focused on UGC, Lays got more than 22 million visits a week to the campaign’s competition Facebook page during the voting phase. Sales increased by 12% for that year.

Wrapping Up

There is no denying that user-generated content converts far more effectively than branded content alone. From an employee selfie at work to a full IG video, display on websites, in social, in ads, or social walls UGC drives trust and boosts sales.

Essential for driving awareness, consideration, and sales, UGC is your most powerful content marketing tool.

Schedule time with our UGC experts today to learn how TINT can help support your marketing goals. 

The post 46 Mind-Blowing Stats About User-Generated Content appeared first on TINT.

We’ve seen it portrayed in TV series like Mad Men, where it’s all sharp suits and martinis in swanky bars. But the changes that happened in the ad world in the 70s go much deeper than simple aesthetics.

The advent of the World Wide Web in 1969 promised more opportunities than regular print ads in newspapers and magazines. Little did we know back then that it would change the history of advertising forever. 

New reports show that half of all global advertising spend is set to be spent online by 2020. In light of this, we look back at how things have changed over the past fifty years. 

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History of Advertising: 1970s

It’s easy to assume that the internet was the changing force needed to shake up the advertising world in the 70s, but it was a more intangible shift that made it one of the most memorable decades for the industry. 

More houses than ever had a TV with more than one channel, which gave consumers more choices than they’d ever had before. As a result, brands were having to shift the way they advertised their products to align with a more customer-centric narrative. 

And, despite the economic pressures and political unrest of the 70s, total ad expenditures shot through the roof. But, rather than pushing money into newspapers and magazines (where ad spend peaked at 73% in 1974), more brands began to turn to TV advertisements. 

As the prevalence of TV spread, viewing became a core experience in American culture, with the vast majority of households having their own TV.

In fact, in 1976, more than 69 million US homes had at least one TV set and watched TV for more than six hours a day. 

The rise in the number of people who could view TV ads combined with the release of new TV channels meant that brands were forced to think differently about the positioning of their ads. This was perhaps the first inkling of the consumer-centric future we are now well-acquainted with. 

The Growth of Computer Technology and a Consumer-Centric Future

Technology continued to advance throughout the decade, with a heavy emphasis starting to emerge on empirical advertising and fact-based marketing. 

Thanks to more media choices, consumers quickly became the drivers of their own advertising experiences. If they didn’t want to see the ads on one TV channel, they could switch over to another. 

Before this, consumers were used to seeing product-centered advertising. 

Ads before the 70s and during the first couple of years of the decade were very product-focused. 

However, in a bid to fight for the attention of consumers, brands realized they needed to move away from this format and dig deeper into the narrative behind why people should buy their products. 

This created a lot of “comparison” ads, which quickly became a standard technique in American advertising by the end of the 70s. 

For example, Burger King and Mcdonald’s regularly mentioned their competition (sometimes indirectly), and Coca-Cola even created their entire “It’s the Real Thing” campaign to go head-to-head with Pepsi. The aim was to promote Coca-Cola as the real thing, and Pepsi as a substandard version. 

Of course, this new comparison narrative opened up a can of worms, which regulatory organizations like the FTC tackled head-on.  

The new struggle to position themselves amongst the competition meant brands faced stricter rules and regulations. At first, we saw brands trying to get away with badmouthing their competition or even making up false claims to make their products sound better. 

In one instance, the FTC ordered Warner-Lambert to correct their claim that Listerine prevents colds and sore throats.

These new regulations that demanded the truth helped consumers begin to see brands as more trustworthy. It also meant consumers in general became less skeptical, which marked a turning point in the advertising world. 

How This Paved the Way For the Future of Advertising

In 1994, we saw the emergence of banner ads and PPC ads, mobile advertising in 1997, Google AdWords in 2000, and video ads on YouTube in 2006. In 2011, online advertising overtook print and radio and, in 2016, mobile advertising revenue overtook desktop advertising revenue. 

In comparison, this plethora of new advertising methods was a far cry from the humble advertising options in the 70s. And, as a result, there are even more opportunities to reach your audience. 

History of Advertising: 2020 – What Can We Expect?

We’re a long way from the 70s now, but there are a few key concepts that emerged in the advertising world during that decade that we still have now. 

For example, the consumer-centric angle of ads has remained prominent, and the need for brands to position their products in relation to their competitors is still much needed – particularly when there are so many more ad options than in the 70s. 

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Now, more than ever, brands are required to actively listen to their customers and respond to their needs with well-thought-out and well-positioned ads if they want to gain a competitive edge. 

We can expect this to continue well into 2020 and beyond. 

This, along with the fact that we have far more information and data than we did in the 70s, as well as a whole new slew of tools, technologies, and platforms to utilize means the next decade could be just as pivotal as the 70s in the history of advertising. 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen an emphasis on personalization. It’s no longer enough for brands to customer-centric ads and hope that enough people see them. Instead, it’s about crafting laser-focused ads from consumer data and putting them on the right platforms. 

So what advertising trends can we expect to see next year?

1. Instagram Stories Ads 

The use of Instagram Stories has continued to rise since the feature was released in 2016. They provide a raw way for brands to create narratives and communicate with their customers in a place they are comfortable. 

As well as more Stories in general, we can expect to see brands making use of the Stories ads feature, too. This allows them to laser-focus on who they reach by using the platform’s incredibly deep targeting options. 

2. Shoppable Posts

Consumer experience is everything, and shoppable posts are providing a way for brands to give customers an enjoyable experience while increasing their sales. 

Shoppable posts on social media are paving the way for a new consumer landscape, where people can buy products with a single click and without having to leave the comfort of their social feed. 

Use TINT’s suite of social tools to turn your posts into shoppable experiences for users.

3. Voice Search

In 2020, it’s thought that 50% of all searches across the internet will be carried out by voice. 

Again, this trend taps into the need for a seamless customer experience. Consumers today are constantly on the go, and searching by voice provides a way for them to instantly get the information they need. 

4. Advanced Technologies

In the 70s, TV ads were new and shiny. The technology was exciting, and brands took advantage. Today, we have a swathe of new, more advanced technologies that are helping advertisers create more personalized ads and better connect with consumers.

These technologies include Artificial Intelligence (AI), Virtual Reality (VR), Machine Learning (ML), and Augmented Reality (AR). 

Along with predictive analytics, which uses consumer data to serve ads based on past behavior and purchases, these technologies will drive innovation forward. They have the power to transform advertising in 2020 by letting brands tailor ads to specific individuals. 

We see fully personalized, authentic ads at some point in the not-too-distant future. 

Evolution of Advertising: From the 70s Until Now 

TV disrupted the status quo and saw advertisers steer away from traditional print ads. Ultimately, it changed the way brands interact with consumers; something that is still happening today.

The customer-centric approach to advertising was born in the 70s, but it remains one of the most prominent concepts going into 2020.

With the internet, and new social platforms online advertising spend is set to overtake offline in 2019.

2020s might be the most exciting times for advertising yet, with advanced technologies making strides towards complete personalization and laser-focused consumer-centricity. How will you take advantage of hyper-personalization in your advertising efforts? 

The post 1970s vs. 2020s – History and Evolution of Advertising appeared first on TINT.

Their omnipresent nature means they are also pivotal in social media marketing campaigns. Not only do they expose your posts to more people, they help you garner engagement and start conversations. 

However, it’s no longer enough to pump out 30 generic hashtags and hope for the best. Instead, a successful hashtag campaign is all about finding the right hashtags and leveraging them to generate engagement and build and community. 

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We’ve handpicked some clever ways brands have used hashtag marketing to reach their social media goals. 

First things first… What Is Hashtag Marketing? 

Hashtag marketing involves promoting your brand using carefully-researched hashtags to connect with a specific audience segment or to increase brand visibility in different verticals. 

There are several important steps that go into creating a successful hashtag marketing campaign.

1. Research and find the right, relevant hashtags for your brand (you can use a tool or stalk the profiles of your competitors and see what hashtags they leverage the most)
2. Build content that supports the hashtag’s niche audience (drive more engagement by joining conversations that are already happening under the hashtag or spark new discussions)
3. Monitor hashtag performance, to determine which hashtags are working the best for you 
4. Optimize your use of hashtags so you end up only engaging in the ones that serve you and your audience best 

Ready for some inspiration? Here are some of the best uses of hashtag marketing we’ve seen. 

1. Hashtags as a Brand Movement

Lays famously crowdsourced ideas for new flavors using the hashtag #DoUsAFlavor. Their audience jumped at the chance to come up with weird and wacky flavor combinations, populating the hashtag with thousands of new conversations.

Once the brand had narrowed down their audiences’ flavor suggestions to just three, they invited their followers to vote for their favorite – again, using the #DoUsAFlavor hashtag. 

The hashtag eventually became an entire movement for the brand, which then launched a microsite around the campaign and continued to encourage people to share their flavor ideas long after the votes had been cast and counted. 

How Lays’ #DoUsAFlavor Campaign Boosted Engagement

The campaign encouraged users to get involved by using a topic that was simple, but that divided opinion and got people talking. 

It riffed off of Marmite’s infamous “love it or hate it” slogan, with social media users eager to jump in with whether they thought suggested flavor combinations were delicious or disgusting. 

When Lays saw how much attention the campaign got, they expanded it further. 

The act of listening to their customers and using initial engagement levels as a springboard to expand the campaign meant they ended up creating a whole subsection of their brand that had people talking for years after the event. 

2. Promote Branded Hashtags With a Giveaway

It’s no secret that we love to win – especially if we win something we really want. 

Hashtag marketers have clocked onto this and, as a result, we’ve seen a swathe of enticing giveaways populating social media over the years.

Running giveaways not only means more people see your brand, but they also generate organic engagement, particularly if, like the majority of brands out there, an entry is claimed by “tagging a friend” or “sharing a post”. 

Fabletics is a veteran of running giveaways on social media. As part of their holiday campaign, they created a 12 day hashtag campaign called #GiftsForMeSweeps, where entrants could win different prizes every day in the lead up to Christmas. 

To claim an entry, users had to like the accompanying photo, follow Fabletics on Instagram, tag a friend, and repost the image using the #GiftsForMeSweeps hashtag. 

How Fabletics’ #GiftsForMeSweeps Giveaway Boosted Engagement

To enter the sweepstake, participants had to engage on social, in almost every way, with the brand – they had to tag a friend, like Fabletics on Instagram, and repost the relevant image. 

Not only that, but entrants had 12 chances to do this to win, which drove essentially 12x the engagement levels of the whole campaign. 

3. Partner With Nano Influencers

The rise of the nano influencer has given brands access to incredibly niche and engaged audiences. 

These influencers tend to have small followings. But, despite their low follower count, their fans are tight-knit and often hang on every word they say. 

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Working with nano influencers – or a series of nano influencers – to run a hashtag campaign not only generates engagement across new audiences, but it also builds trust and credibility for your brand. This is because the trust and credibility of the nano influencer is automatically passed across to the brands they promote. 

Shoe brand Sperry unlocked the power of nano influencers during one hashtag campaign on Instagram. 

They kicked things off by identifying more than 100 nano influencers that were already sharing high-quality photos of their products and invited them to create more content for the official Sperry Instagram account using the hashtag #OdysseysAwait. 

Because the influencers were already posting about Sperry, the brand didn’t have to try hard to bring them on board. 

How Sperry’s #OdysseysAwait Campaign Boosted Engagement

Because they started the campaign off by promoting the posts of people who were already sharing high-quality pictures of the products, it kicked off a kind of snowball effect that encouraged others to start sharing.

Other Sperry customers wanted in on the action and, as you can see from the hashtag landing page on Instagram, began posting epic pictures of their shoes in amazing places in the hopes of getting a mention from the brand. 

It probably also helped that the #OdysseysAwait hashtag encouraged users to share pics in exotic and beautiful locations – content that tends to perform particularly well on Instagram. 

4. Jump on Trending Hashtags

Creating an entire hashtag campaign from scratch can seem like a daunting task. However, the beauty of hashtags is that they’re open for anyone and everyone to join. 

Head to any social media channel and you’ll be able to find the trending hashtags of the day. 

These hashtags are populated with users and drive incredible amounts of engagement as they capture the most talked about topics of the day. Brands can capitalize on this by getting involved in relevant trending hashtags (the key word is relevant here).

Broader hashtags that can be twisted to fit your brand narrative are easier to high-jack than hashtags that relate to a specific event or person. For example, hashtags like #WisdomWednesday and #MotivationMondays are a good place to start.

YoungMindsUK, a charity that promotes mental wellbeing in young people, high-jacked the trending #ThursdayThoughts hashtag in a meaningful way. Each week, they share creative imagery and inspiring stories under the hashtag to raise awareness of mental health. 

How YoungMindsUK’s #ThursdayThoughts Campaign Boosted Engagement

The brand’s posts not only reached their followers (who we can assume are already in-the-know about mental health issues in the younger generations), the brand managed to reach a wider audience that were hanging out on the trending hashtag. 

The eye-catching imagery captured the attention of serial scrollers, while their calls-to-action at the end of each post encouraged their followers to actively do something. 

5. Encourage Action

Calls-to-action are a great way to push followers into action and get them to engage with a post or hashtag (the saying “if you want something, you have to ask for it” is particularly apt here).

The Make-A-Wish Foundation’s #ShareYourEars campaign is one of the most prominent examples of this kind of hashtag campaign – mostly because the hashtag is the call-to-action.

The aim of the campaign was to raise money for the charity, with Disney donating $5 (up to $2 million) to Make-A-Wish for every photo tagged with the #ShareYourEars hashtag and featuring a pair of Mickey Mouse ears. 

It was a really simple way for social media users to raise money for the charity (which grants life-changing wishes to critically ill children) that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to.

How Make-A-Wish’s #ShareYourEars Campaign Boosted Engagement

The Make-A-Wish charity is one that a lot of people can get behind. No one wants to see a child suffer, which is why this campaign worked so well. 

Social media users were able to get involved and feel like they were making a difference and helping out a good cause. Despite the seriousness of the charity, the core message was positive and the campaign idea was fun. It also helped that the hashtag literally asked people to get involved.

Hashtag Marketing to Boost Engagement

Hashtags are a great tool for expanding your reach, tapping into new audiences and building a community around your brand – as shown in action by the examples here. 

Take inspiration from these successful campaigns, which continue to prove that the trusty hashtag can – and does – have a powerful effect on engagement levels.

The post 5 Clever Ways Brands Use Hashtag Marketing To Boost Engagement appeared first on TINT.

The rise in influencer marketing has seen brands from all different industries collaborating with distinguished accounts in an attempt to carve deeper connections with their followers and generate more sales. 

And more brands are catching on to the power of the influencer.

In fact, a survey by Influencer Marketing Hub revealed that 67% of marketers are set to increase their influencer marketing budget over the next year. 

We’ve seen the world of influencer marketing expand and evolve, and it has gone through many adaptations, from partnerships with world famous celebrities to entire TV shows like Love Island that spout out ready-made influencers.

With the industry set to become a $21.1 billion market by 2023, we take a look at some of the trends we can expect to see over the next 12 months. 

2020’s Top Influencer Marketing Trends 

1. A Surge in Partnerships With Nano and Micro-Influencers

Brands are no longer set on signing the biggest celebrity that they can. 

Instead, they are identifying key players in their industry that have smaller and more focused audiences. 

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These influencers are known as nano or micro-influencers, and they tend to hold a lot more value than larger celebrity endorsements because they are so focused.

This is particularly important in an age where consumers crave personalization and authenticity. Customers expect to see marketing messages that speak directly to them, and focused nano influencer campaigns are a great way to create credibility and a sense of personalization. 

Take this campaign from Dove as an example. 

The brand teamed up with Instagram user Msyipsa. The fashion and lifestyle influencer only has 1,600 followers, but they are engaged and hang on every word she says – we only have to look at the comments on her posts to see that. 

Do it Yourself

Start by identifying key nano or micro influencers in your niche (that is, relevant accounts with between 1k and 50k followers). 

Ideally, you want to pinpoint accounts that have a high engagement rate. A quick calculation gives you this info. Add up the likes and comments on a post, divide it by the number of followers, and multiplying it by 100 to get a percentage. 

For example, the formula for this post from Myipsa, which has 170 likes and 14 comments would be: 

(170 + 14) / 1636 (the number of followers she has) x 100 = 11.24% 

This is an incredibly high engagement rate when you compare it to the average on Instagram. 

Reach out to the influencers you identify and work to build a relationship with them.

2. Combining Influencer Content With Shoppable Posts

Shoppable posts make it easy for consumers to make purchases on social media without leaving the platform. 

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Research has shown that social platforms like Instagram are heavily influential in the buying process, with 83% of users claiming the platform helps them discover new products. 

Turning influencer posts into shoppable moments can increase sales even further.

Think about it: if nano and micro influencers already hold immense persuasion power and credibility, imagine how many more conversions you’re going to get if their followers can buy instantly from their posts. 

In fact, an increasing number of influencers are using social media tools to turn their posts into shoppable post for brand collaborations. 

Take this example from influencer saythelees, who partnered with NARSissist to promote their latest concealer. 

Her post tagged the product which, when clicked, took followers straight to a checkout page where they could buy instantly from through Instagram. 

Do It Yourself

Provide influencers with your product catalog (or at least, the product catalog of the items you want them to shout about), which they can then tag in their posts for you.

When their followers click on the tagged products, they’ll instantly be taken to a ready-made checkout page and can buy with one click. 

3. CGI Influencers to Personify Brands

This might sound like something that has stepped straight out of a sci-fi movie, but CGI influencers are actually a thing.

The first murmurings we heard about this futuristic technique was through a PR stunt from LA-based startup Brud, that specializes in robotics and artificial intelligence. 

Their creation, dubbed Lil Miquela, was a computer-generated influencer that grew quite the following. Throughout her time in the spotlight, she has posted about brands big and small, including Spotify. 

At first glance, Miquela’s Instagram account seems just like any other influencer account – there’s pictures of her hanging out with friends, staged scenes promoting fashion lines, and photos of her traveling all over the world. 

Look closer, though, and you’ll see that Miquela isn’t a real person. Each post has been computer crafted to emulate the feed of a real-life influencer. 

Could this be the future?

It begs the question: why spend thousands of dollars sending real people products and flying them around the world when you can create your own influencers from the comfort of your own home or office? 

While we’re pretty sure we’re still far from a world where Instagram influencers are made with technology, we wanted to give this a mention as it’s one of the most creative and innovative techniques in the influencer marketing world right now. 

Do It Yourself

If you’ve got the tools to create a CGI persona, you’re all set. 

It’s important that you create a character that your audience can relate to and understand. Then, it’s a case of crafting stories that combine both them and your brand or products.

Tread carefully with this one so it doesn’t come across as branded messages!

4. Encouraging Employees to Become Influencers

Employee advocacy has really exploded in the past year as brands start to realize that their audience connects better with real-life people than the brands themselves.

Not sure what employee advocacy entails? It’s when a brand encourages its employees or specific team members to become influencers by writing posts, sharing social updates, and creating human relationships with leads. 

Macy’s in-house influencer program is a great example of this.

The brand has worked hard to inspire its workers to share the behind-the-scenes of their job, mention the brand as and when they can, and promote it across their social channels to friends and family.

As a result, they’ve managed to turn more than 300 employees into brand ambassadors. 

“We see this as developing a relationship with our employees. This gives them an incentive to be proud of Macy’s, to make some money and come to work more energized each day,” says a Macy’s executive. 

Do It Yourself

First of all, you need to get employees excited about sharing content. 

You can do this by offering workshops that help spark creative social media ideas, brainstorm topics, and share new content via internal channels so that employees can handpick the content that speaks to them. 

You can also offer incentives for those that post and reward high levels of social sharing through an in-house competition.

5. Expanding Reach By Joining Different Channels

When we think of influencer marketing we tend to think of Instagram – and for good reason. The majority of influencer marketing campaigns over the last year have been run through Instagram. 

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However, in 2020 we can expect to see brands expanding their reach on different channels as younger generations turn to other platforms, like TikTok and Switch. 

We’re starting to see an increase in the number of brands collaborating with influencers on these new, incredibly popular platforms as traditional social channels lose favor with younger generations. 

Take this example from Chipotle. 

The fast food brand teamed up with a series of high-follower accounts on TikTok to promote their #GuacDance campaign.

As you can see here, this one post alone racked up 46.1k likes and 542 shares – proving that, if brands step out of their comfort zone and move away from platforms they’re used to, they can reap huge rewards. 

Do It Yourself

Start by familiarizing yourself with new social platforms and get a feel for the kind of content your audience engages with on them. 

Then identify key influencers in your niche that have decent followings on those platforms and reach out to them in the way you would with any other influencer. 

Make Influencer Marketing Matter in 2020

Influencer marketing is constantly changing and evolving. 

If you want to succeed, stay on top of the latest trends and figure out how you and your brand can get involved – whether that’s by creating CGI influencers, stepping out of your comfort zone and tapping into different platforms, or combining influencer posts with shoppable posts for more sales.

The most important thing is to think about what will resonate best with your audience and start testing out some of these trends over the next 12 months.

The post 5 Influencer Marketing Trends To Watch in 2020 appeared first on TINT.

At this time of year, we eagerly await the arrival of festive content from our favorite brands, but sometimes it can all feel a little overwhelming.  

This is where UGC swoops in and saves the day (or the season). 

Content created by fans, followers, and customers can be a refreshing addition to glitzy holiday marketing campaigns and a welcome break from the bombardment of holiday promotions. 

After all, the festive season is a time for giving and sharing, and nothing generates shares quite like UGC. 

In fact, people are twice as likely to share UGC than other types of content. 

With that in mind, let’s dig into the ways you can embrace the festive spirit of giving and sharing and leverage this powerful marketing technique. 

First Things First… Encourage Your Followers to Get Involved

In order to create a successful UGC campaign that’s bursting with inspiring content, you need to get your followers on board. This means encouraging them to share their pictures, videos, and reviews about your brand and products.

There are several different ways that brands have approached this: some package their campaign as a contest where a UGC post counts as one entry, while others create a designated hashtag to foster a sense of community.

Top tip: use TINT’s Experience Builder feature to generate engagement and empower your customers to share specific content and collect it together in one handy portal. 

Actively encouraging your followers to make or create something in this way has the potential to create a deeper connection with them, particularly if they’re creating something specifically to post as part of your UGC experience.

Take KitKat, as an example. 

The world-famous candy brand inspired its customers to take action by encouraging them to share ways they incorporate the chocolate into their holiday recipes and crafts.

The customer-centric approach with a holiday spin, gave the brand clever, branded, and, most importantly, valuable content to share. As a result, their marketing teams could relax on content creation because they already had access to all the content they needed for a festive campaign. 

Show Off UGC On Your Website

A successful UGC campaign gives you access to a swathe of content that’s relevant and engaging – not to mention persuasive, as people are far more likely to listen to the experiences and reviews of their peers than the brand itself. 

The key is to make the most of all the content you collect. 

Don’t just share each piece once on social media and let it disappear into the ether. Instead, publish content across different platforms, leverage every piece more than once for different purposes, and get creative with where you place it.

Consider displaying your UGC:

• On your website homepage 
• On relevant product pages 
• On a specially-built microsite 
• On your blog 

For example, you might repackage a series of festive UGC pictures into a 12 days of Christmas display on your website.

JW Marriott is a pro at packaging up and sharing their UGC across their website. 

Not only do they pull all the content into one, scrollable place, they add an additional element to the campaign by giving users the chance to win a holiday when they post a piece of content. 

Inspire Action With Calls-to-Action

While UGC is widely shared and also one of the most engaging forms of content, it’s also a great way to generate more conversions and inspire action amongst your followers.

Calls-to-action (CTAs) are an important part of any marketing strategy, but combining them with UGC makes them a force to be reckoned with. This is particularly true when you consider that Instagram influences almost 75% of user purchase decisions. 

Incorporating effective CTAs in UGC can help you capture the attention of shoppers looking for the perfect holiday gift – just make sure your CTAs are clear and concise. 

Top tips for creating a compelling CTA:

• Use words that inspire action, like click or buy
• Make sure your CTA stands out and doesn’t get lost in the image – you don’t want users to miss it!
• Keep it short and simple
• Deliver on your promise (i.e. don’t announce that users can get 50% off if it’s not true) 

Now you know how to create the perfect CTA, all you have to do is put it together with some of your festive UGC. 

You might decide to share an Instagram post with a CTA that encourages people to click a product or use TINT’s hotspots and Instagram CTAs to guide followers through to your product listings. 

Zara Home overlays images with shoppable product CTAs that encourage followers to clicks through and find out more. This is particularly useful during the holiday season, as you want to capture people who are in gift-buying mode. 

Encourage and Curate Video Content 

User generated pictures are great, but take it to the next level this Christmas by encouraging your followers to share videos as well. 

According to research, relevant videos drive more engagement and revenue for brands on social media. 

Not only do they build a deeper connection between your followers and your brand, but they provide the perfect way to instill a sense of community at this time of year. Reports have shown that they also increase credibility for a brand too, which is incredibly helpful when you’re competing against millions of other businesses to get the attention of Christmas shoppers. 

Sainsburys leveraged the power of UGC video for their successful Christmas campaign.

The brand encouraged their customers to send in short videos of themselves doing festive things and then sewed them all together to create a longer video that solely featured their customers.

The result was a community-inspired piece of content that gave viewers the warm fuzzies at this special time of year. 

Showcase Customer Reviews and Testimonials

People are on the hunt for presents at this time of year, so make it easy for them to buy from you with plenty of peer reviews of your products.

Reviews are incredibly important in the buying process, especially when you consider that a whopping 97% of all consumers turn to reviews before they make a purchase. 

The key to leveraging reviews is to not be afraid of getting creative with how and where you display them. 

As well as splashing testimonials from review sites across their relevant product pages, you can also share them across your social media channels with a handy link to the product that’s been mentioned. 

Don’t forget to repost any reviews your customers have put on their social channels, too, as this provides a really quick and easy way to get positive reviews out there. 

Bison Socks turned their Instagram Stories into festive testimonials by adding a few key customer reviews to their posts. They also tacked on a button that hinted at 200 more 5-star reviews for an extra layer of social proof. 

Integrate UGC Into Your Emails

There’s a high chance you’ll be sending more emails than usual around Christmas as you encourage last minute gift purchases. This provides you with the perfect opportunity to drop in some UGC to make your emails more engaging and persuasive. 

If you’re promoting a specific product or a gift guide, you might decide to share some UGC related to those products, or you might collect a handful of customer reviews to sprinkle throughout your emails. 

Costa Coffee is a great example of how a brand can use UGC in an email. 

In fact, this entire email segment is dedicated to promoting their festive UGC campaign, #MerryChristmasToMe. They show off a couple of pieces of UGC that have already been shared and encourage subscribers to get involved in the campaign themselves. 

This adds a fun and light feel to their holiday campaign and nurtures a sense of community around their brand. 

The Holidays Are Coming – Are You Ready? 

The holiday season is a time for sharing and giving, and UGC ties in perfectly with this festive tradition. 

Whether you decide to publish UGC on your website, display it on relevant product pages, share it across your social channels, or sprinkle it throughout your holiday emails, tapping into this powerful marketing tactic will help increase brand awareness and foster more sales at this important time of year. 

The tips we’ve provided here – along with the fun and festive examples – will help you create campaigns that leverage the inspiring UGC you have access to and encourage action in your followers. We can’t think of a better Christmas gift. 

So tell us, which of these ideas will you be implementing this holiday season?

The post How To Leverage User Generated Content For Holiday Campaigns appeared first on TINT.