Have you ever looked on tripadvisor before booking a holiday? Watched a review or testimonial video made by a customer?
This is user generated content or UGC
Content about your company created and posted by customers.
What makes this content so powerful is that is the authentic voice of the customer and therefore trusted by potential customers. It is the most potent and powerful marketing content you can have, when your customers are saying something nice, of course.
Video especially is a really powerful form of UGC. The production quality of the videos is not a reflection of your brand because it is from the customer so all video UGC is valid.
Videos work better the more you have, and UGC is a great way to cost effectively scale your video production.
Review videos, testimonial videos, unboxing videos or opinion pieces are all a fantastic way to leverage UGC.
Think of it as scaling word of mouth online.
Your customers are a fantastic source of UGC and also staff members, resellers, partners or distributors are a great resource.
So how do you go about enabling people to create their own video content?
Well firstly you ask them, and then you make it as simple as possible for them to do it.
You can request people send in video their video clips using tools like WeTransfer and google docs clips and that you can edit into finished branded videos to share. Remember one powerful aspect to UGC is that the people who create the videos should be able to share them also to leverage their social media following.
There are also tools like www.shoutout.social that automate the entire UGC video making process.
Think about asking people any way you can, via direct emails, social media or via your website. The important thing to remember is to keep asking, without hounding people of course. You will find that happy customers are very willing to give you a written review or quick video testimonial. You just need a process to ask them, especially when they are telling you how happy they are. With video you don’t need to create a big production. Just ask them to record a quick message on their smartphone. You are not trying to make an award winning video here, you just want an authentic and honest testimonial from your happy customers.
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