Consumers trust other consumers. That’s why user-generated content is such an effective marketing strategy. Also, encouraging user-generated content from your current customers is an awesome way to engage them in your marketing process. The business-consumer relationship isn’t purely transactional. Chances are that a lot of your customers feel connected to your business, and curating user-generated content is a fun, powerful way to establish reciprocity in that connection.

Ideas for UGC Campaigns

Gathering UGC is relatively easy, especially if you already have a presence on social media. But even if you’re just getting started with growing your social audience, you can use some of the following methods to collect UGC:

• Use VoxFeed: VoxFeed is a platform that allows you to invite and manage UGC campaigns with your clients. You can manage invitations, requests, content created, payments, and measure the performance of every single interaction.
• Giveaways: Running a giveaway is an excellent way to gather UGC. Photo contests are perfect because you’re asking users to submit a photo for entry into your giveaway.
• Reviews: Reviews are another great way to gather authentic feedback. You can ask users to review your product and include a photo or video to show potential customers.
• Tagging: Whenever customers purchase your products, ask them to tag your brand on social media with their thoughts. Since tagged posts show up on your social profile, it serves as social proof, demonstrating you have a thriving customer base.
• Reward: You can offer a discount or coupon code to customers in return for reviews and feedback that include UGC. This improves the chances of users taking part with little effort required on your part.
• Challenges: Challenge your fans to create something involving one of your products and post pictures of the results. For example, you can challenge them to redesign a product and sharing the photos on Instagram, which you can use for promotional messages.

5 User-Generated Content Campaign Examples

Not all campaigns are created equally, so be sure that your campaign will stand out in all the best ways! Lets break down 5 successful UGC campaigns with examples to back them up!

Give your Campaign a Purpose

To be successful with UGC, you need to have a clear idea of what you want to achieve. Once you’ve named your campaign’s purpose – whether it be sharing honest customer reviews, showcasing a product’s features, providing instructional videos, etc – you’ll need to decide what style of content and information is essential to successfully carry it out. Take ASOS’ wild success with their “As Seen on Me” campaign. ASOS began as a start-up that sold fashion clothing items of celebrities “as seen on screen” and since has grown into one of the most popular global fashion brands for young adults. With a clever twist on their namesake, they launched the #AsSeenOnMe campaign in 2014 as a link to their e-commerce store where customers’ photos were used to advertise their clothing items. This was successful primarily because potential customers could see how the clothes actually fit everyday people and provided an opportunity for fashionistas to express their unique styles.

Make it Memorable and Engaging

A second but equally important aspect of creating a successful UGC campaign is ensuring that your content is memorable and engaging, thus making it something worth sharing. One of the most memorable UGC campaigns was Coca-Cola’s 2011 “Share a Coke” campaign. By featuring a number of common names on their bottles, they successfully added a ‘personal touch’ that consumers went crazy for. People were encouraged to find their names and share pictures of their personalized bottle on their social media channels alongside the hashtag #ShareACoke. This campaign created a personal experience for billions of people around the world, leading to high levels of engagement and creative UGC. People are more than willing to create thoughtful, authentic content if the campaign generates excitement and a sense of inclusivity.

Show Appreciation for Your Community

Within every brand, there is a community that surrounds it – from the employees working hard to push forward its success to the loyal customers who return for its product or service. It’s important to show appreciation to the group of people who dedicate their time and money to your brand and including them in a UGC campaign is a great way to make them feel seen. The Starbucks #WhiteCupContest is a great example of putting a spotlight on a brand’s community. This creative low-cost campaign invited customers to draw designs on Starbucks’ signature white cups (something of which people already did) and post their creations online to be considered for the next reusable cup design. This campaign did two things simultaneously – it generated interesting and unique UGC as well as a sea of free product design that consumers are excited to buy. Again – inclusivity is a key factor in fostering excitement and interest – it’s within our human nature to seek inclusion and community, tapping into that desire increases longevity and trust within your brand.

Show Diversity

Speaking of inclusivity (yet again), how diverse is your customer base? Does your brand represent a single segment of our vast local and global communities or are you putting in the effort to include representation of the many individuals out there? Diversity within your brand is a  great strength – not only do you reach more people, but you also cultivate unparalleled authenticity in the content you produce. Embracing diversity provides important opportunities for learning, growth and understanding – and as a result, it allows space for a meaningful connection to be established between you and the community at large. Fenty Beauty’s “Foundation for All” campaign is a stellar example of the impact that diversity and inclusion within a brand can have. Before this campaign ran in 2018, it was a chore for people with darker skin complexions to find a foundation that came even close to their skin tone. Fenty made it a point to end that once and for all by producing a line of foundations with every possible skin tone in mind. This effort changed the lives of so many people and most importantly, it made them feel seen and considered. A UGC campaign that champions diversity speaks to the heart – and as we all know, the heart forms the strongest of connections.

Create a Call to Action (Literally!)

Find a way to put your product into action with a UGC campaign that encourages your customers to get out there! In the beauty industry? Make contests around creating the most unique look. In the outdoors industry? Encourage your users to travel and share their experiences! Whatever industry you’re in, an actionable campaign can be made, it just takes some creativity and an open mind to find it. UGC campaigns that encourage people to take action in one form or another reveals the possibilities of your product or service to your potential customers and gives a deeply valued experience to the customers creating the content. A campaign that epitomizes a literal call to adventure is the #GoPro hashtag. GoPro encourages their customers to use their products to film their travel adventures, leading them to outstanding results. Gorgeous shots from all over the world are being shared, giving potential customers plenty of reason to buy their cameras and the rest of us some awe-inspiring content to brighten our days.

How to Start an UGC Campaign

1. Invite them to your campaign through a link

Once you have your brand and UGC campaign created on VoxFeed, you only have to click on “Share Campaign”:

A link will be automatically generated and copied so you can share it with your customers. You can send it by direct message, e-mail, or any other channel of communication that you have with your brand fans.

This URL takes whoever opens it to a page where they can see the campaign’s brief and register in the platform to participate. VoxFeed takes care of all of the onboarding.

Once the customers you invited join the campaign, their account will show up on your “Requests” section,

2. You have the power: Manage all the content

Every customer that wants to participate, has to create and send a UGC proposal so you can review and approve it. If it doesn’t fit the brief or the purpose of your campaign, you can suggest changes to it.

Nothing gets published without your approval. In addition, you can also set the date and time for that content to be published. Your brand advocates have to post the exact same content that you approved, otherwise it’s not validated. This means that the post that you have approved, cannot have any change to it afterward.

3. Measure Results

Once you have active participants, you will see the distribution of your credit and the flow of posts in your campaign. When those posts are live, you will be able to see their results. To have full control of the performance of your campaign, we suggest assigning specific UTM to the URLs of your campaign and/or a campaign dedicated Landing Page.

4. Repurpose UGC

repurposing user-generated content allows you to accomplish several important things:

• Extend the content’s reach and visibility through repetition
• Highlight different aspects of your business
• Reach more customers on different platforms
• Show users that you appreciate their participation
• Integrate user-generated content into more parts of your marketing strategy