There is a massive choice of content marketing options and this often overwhelms small businesses owners. The problem becomes prioritizing the best types of content that customers engage in. First, find out what your customers engage with, and making sure your business produces more.
There’s a major disconnect between what content brands want to produce, and what customers want to consume. Bridging this gap will make you stand out above your competition and bring more customers into your business.
The Content Gap
92% of marketers believe most of their brand content is authentic and resonates with consumers, when over 50% of consumers believe less than half of brands create authentic content. Authenticity is a key part of creating valuable content, as 90% of consumers say authenticity is a major factor when deciding which brands, they support.
A majority of marketers and brands believe that authenticity is important, however, they think that brand-created content is genuine. Consumers are 2.4x more likely to say user-generated content (UGC) is authentic, compared to brand created content, when marketers are twice as likely to say brand-created material is more authentic. [Source]
3 UGC Forms, Many Formats
There are three major forms of UGC. Text, pictures and video. You can combine these in creative ways, using text on top of video, video turned into GIF’s, or memes that use text on top of photos. Then there are the many formats these forms take, social media, blog posts, reviews and testimonials, QnA’s, case studies, social media posts, and many other forms of UGC your business can use.
Providing authentic, value-added, UGC content (phew, there’s a mouthful) will make your marketing more vulnerable and connect with more viewers. Most content marketing only scratches the surface, providing simple ‘how-to’ content that doesn’t resonate with most readers.
While you can produce great content using keyword research to cover basic niche ‘how-to’s’, it’s not the only way to go about it. You should combine your brand’s unique knowledge, experience and skills within the content, alongside UGC made by customers, partners, staff, social media followers and subscribers.
Three UGC Ideas to Start Today
Here are three quick UGC strategies you can start right away.
1. Create a brand hashtag: Using a custom hashtag allows you to find posts your customers share (using your hashtag), so you can keep track of UGC and share that content.
2. Create a photo contest: Invite your subscribers and customers to share a photo about the brand or them using the products or anything at all, and the UGC you get becomes great sharable content to use in social media.
3. Run a survey: Use simple multiple choice questions, and use the results in presentations, social media posts, blog posts and more. Your customers’ voices provide the best content.
If you’re starting a UGC campaign and optimizing your content marketing strategy, then reach out to one of the marketing experts at The Archangel Group today and we’ll help.
