User-generated content (UGC) has become content gold for brands looking to build authentic connections with their audience. Why is UGC such a big deal?
For starters, UGC provides social proof, boosts engagement, and builds trust with your audience. But the business benefits of UGC go much deeper than that.
Benefits of UGC
- Featuring UGC on product pages can increase time-on-site by up to 90% and conversions by 29%.
- Ads featuring UGC achieve 4x higher click-through rates and a 50% drop in cost-per-click compared to average ads.
- 56% of consumers say they are more likely to buy a product after seeing it featured in a relatable or positive UGC photo.
When people share their genuine experiences, that content resonates more than polished brand messages. The simple fact is that people trust other people more than they trust faceless brands. In fact, a recent study found that 84% of consumers are more likely to trust a brand’s marketing campaign if it features UGC.
With these facts about UGC in mind, it’s clear that incorporating user-generated content into your marketing strategy is not just a nice-to-have, it’s essential.
Now, I am pretty sure I know what you’re thinking.
“UGC sounds great, but I really don’t have time to scroll Instagram 24/7 looking for it!”
Fortunately, harnessing UGC doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right tools, finding, managing, and incorporating UGC into your marketing strategy can be easy and efficient. In this article, we are going to show you how Agorapulse’s monitoring tools can make this process simple, so you can tap into the power of UGC today.
What Exactly Is UGC?
Let’s first talk about what kind of content exactly falls into the category of “user-generated content.” Because you might be wondering:
- Does UGC have to be found on social media platforms?
- Does UGC have to be a photo or video?
- Does UGC have to be from an influencer?
And the answer to all of these questions is no!
User-generated content is any content—photos, videos, testimonials, reviews, tweets, blog posts—created by your real customers and fans.
That means you can find user-generated content all over the place! The downside of this is that it can be hard to know where to even begin your search for UGC. That’s where using a social monitoring tool like Agorapulse can really come in handy, as it will speed up your search for UGC by automating part of the process. (Don’t worry, we will show you how!)
How to Harness UGC With Agorapulse
The easiest method for finding authentic and relevant user-generated content is to create social monitoring searches for specific keywords. Many happy customers will share their experiences using natural language, or variations of your brand name, which you might miss if you only look for UGC in direct mentions.
By monitoring certain keywords, you can discover a broader range of customer content that mentions your brand in a variety of contexts.
Here’s how you can do this in Agorapulse.
1. Create a List of Keywords to Monitor
Before you get started creating your actual searches, you’ll need to make a list of the keywords you want to monitor. This list should include your company name, as well as any abbreviations. It can also be helpful to include other branded terms, such as a company tagline, or a specific product line. This ensures you capture any brand mentions that happen, even if users don’t tag you directly.
Pro Tip: Include common misspellings of your brand name to catch every mention. You’d be surprised how many ways people can spell a brand name wrong. How do we know? Just ask us how many times we get referred to as “Agoraplus” on social media.
Now, thinking beyond branded keywords, it is also useful to set up searches for general industry-related keywords as well as more specific keywords.
The more general terms will help you cast a wide net and therefore return a wide range of results from your search. The more specific terms will help narrow things down and help you filter out anything that doesn’t fit what you are looking for.
For example, if your company was Nike, you could include more general terms like “sneakers” and then get more specific with, “air force ones”. This helps in identifying potential UGC that might not directly mention your brand but are still relevant.
Another benefit of starting out with a broad search is that you may come across different or unexpected keywords and hashtags that perhaps you would not have thought of otherwise.
For example, when creating a search for ‘sneakers,’ I found that many of the results also had many other specific hashtags, such as #fitnessmotivation, #runnersofinstagram, and #marathontraining, which often included posts that were perfect examples of user-generated content.
2. Set Up Listening Searches for UGC
So now that you have an idea of the keywords you want to monitor, the next step will be going into Agorapulse and creating your searches.
To get started, head over to the listening tab, and click on the Create your first search orange button.
From there, you can select the sources you want to create a search for: Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, news sites, or blog posts.
Once you select the sources to monitor, the next part will be setting the parameters of your search. You can use exclude parameters or operators like ‘AND’ and ‘OR’ to create the perfect search for finding UGC.
For example, if I wanted to search for “sneakers,” but didn’t want to see results that mentioned direct competitors, I could use an exclude parameter to add in the names of competitors. This would then filter out any posts that contained those keywords, reducing the amount of noise and unrelated posts in the search results.
In the advanced listening add-on, you will find that it is also possible to filter your results by the language of the items and the countries of origin. (Note that the geographic and language filters are currently only available for the web news and web blog sources.)
When you have finished setting up these parameters, hit the Save search button, and then go take a look at the results to see if you have found any UGC gold!
3. Curate the Right UGC For Your Brand
When looking at the results of your listening search, you might see an overwhelming amount of UGC, which is great, because that means customers like your brand! But you also should know that not all UGC you find will be created to an equally great standard. So when deciding which to use in your own posts, on your website, or in other marketing content, you don’t want to just pick any random post that mentions your brand or has a photo of your product.
You want to choose relatable content that is also aligned with your brand image and values.
To maintain quality and consistency in UGC content, you may find it beneficial to provide your audience (and perhaps your marketing team) with guidelines on how to create and share UGC. This can include guidelines for branded hashtags, themes, and formats that align with your brand’s voice and style.
Clear guidelines help users understand what kind of content you’re looking for and how they can participate and will help ensure that your social media team doesn’t get carried away sharing stuff that is off-brand. This not only improves the quality of the UGC but also makes it easier for you to curate and share.
4. Engage with UGC Creators
Engagement is a two-way street. So when you find user-generated content, you need to acknowledge it by liking, commenting, or, if it makes sense, sharing the post. This will show appreciation and encourage them to create similar content again in the future.
Plus, when you actively engage with users who create content about your brand, you strengthen your relationship with them and encourage others to share their experiences as well.
It can be useful for your social media team to develop engagement templates to be used anytime someone mentions or tags your brand in user-generated content.
In Agorapulse, you can use the ‘Saved Replies’ feature to save you even more time when engaging or responding to brand mentions or user-generated content. This can make your workflow more efficient if you find yourself frequently using the same responses over and over again.
To create a new saved reply, click on Create a new reply within the Social Inbox. First, name the reply, then add a text of the saved reply itself into the field below. You can also manage all of your saved replies in your profile settings.
Pro Tip: Develop multiple saved replies for different scenarios. For example, have one for thanking users, another for resharing content, and another for addressing any inquiries about how to submit user-generated content.
5. Repurpose and Share UGC
Sharing on your social media accounts or using it in your marketing content shows that you value your customers’ experiences and are willing to highlight their stories. Plus, it’s a great way to fill your content calendar without needing a ton of additional resources. UGC is also handy for the days when you are fresh out of ideas and don’t know what to post.
But it’s also extremely important that, when you want to use UGC, you first of all ask permission, and then credit the original creator in your post. Failing to do this can be detrimental to your brand because:
- 95% of creators say brands should ask for permission before using their content.
- 70% say brands that use user-generated video content without permission aren’t trustworthy.
Bonus Tip: Create a dedicated section on your Instagram page for UGC, such as a “Customer Spotlight” or “Fan Friday,” where you regularly feature posts from your customers.
This not only provides fresh content but also encourages more people to create UGC in hopes of being featured.
6. Analyze UGC Performance
Finally, you will want to analyze the performance of your UGC to help you understand what types of UGC your audience finds most engaging. This can inform your broader content strategy and help you focus on the types of UGC that drive the best results. For instance, if photos perform better than videos, you could encourage more photo submissions.
Agorapulse offers robust analytics and reporting features to measure the impact of UGC on your social media performance. For instance, you could track the performance of your UGC posts by adding a custom label to them and then later analyze the performance of the group as a whole by creating a label report.
Don’t Forget About UGC
Bottom line: Capturing UGC can completely transform your social media strategy. By efficiently finding, engaging with, and sharing UGC, you build stronger connections with your audience and create a more authentic brand presence. If you want to see firsthand how Agorapulse can help you capture more UGC with less effort, then why not start a free trial?
