In the age of social media, your users are louder than ever. All you have to do is search a business to see what users are saying about it. Users are telling business through a megaphone what they like, what they don't like, and what they want to see. But the mistake that some businesses make is not listening. Smart businesses, on the other hand, are letting their users guide their content strategies through user generated content.
Consider these numbers:
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Facebook garnered 1.44 billion active users every month for the first quarter of 2015.
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Instagram maintains 300 million active users every month as of January 2015.
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Twitter reached 255 million active monthly users as of 2014.
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YouTube has had 1 billion active users each month as of 2013.
With so many resources for user generated content, you don't want to miss out on these opportunities to create truly valuable content. User generated content is content that user play a role in creating. For example, a platform that allows users to publish their own content on your site, like Burberry's Art of the Trench website, which allows people to upload their own pictures of themselves wearing Burberry products. User generated content could also be as simple as including tweets by customers about your product or service on your testimonials page.
User generated content is candid, authentic, and invaluable for businesses to glean what sort of other content users would like to see in the future. User generated content allows businesses to interact with their users, and to create a community where users interact with each other. Coca-Cola did this with their Share a Coke Twitter campaign, where customers were able to find Coke bottles with their names on them and share them to their social media. This increased Coca-Cola's sales by 2% in 2014.
With all of this in mind, if your business is not making use of user generated content, it's time to start.
This infographic breaks down how user generated content will keep your brand relevant.