Content is King – Community is Queen – mit User Generated Content authentische Inhalte erzeugen und wirken (lassen)

Millennials and Gen Z have replaced baby boomers as the largest group of buyers. The latter in particular are even more likely than their Millennial counterparts to buy something based on recommendations from family, friends, bloggers, influencers and the like. Today, a chorus of buyer voices, the “brandvocates,” is united, who often have more influence on buyers’ purchasing decisions than marketers themselves.

User-generated content (UGC), that is, content generated by users (or customers), can thus be an immensely helpful tool for buyers.

But UGC is not only useful for shoppers – it can also be a powerful tool for customer loyalty, image retention and lead generation for companies if used correctly. But how do I use the content of my users correctly?

Relax and let your customers do the marketing for you. Sounds easy. But it usually isn’t. But with the right moves, you can get a lot out of reviews, videos, comments and other content.

Just imagine: You motivate users to generate content for you – and then use it properly. But sparking intrinsic motivation in corporate communications is not always trivial – it’s important to give users the right framework and content direction.

Future outlook: AI & User Generated Content

Everyone is talking about ChatGPT, Neuroflash and texts written by AI in general. More and more texts are being written by such tools, often unnoticed, but with significant differences to UGC. Amazon reviews written by bots are one example. It remains exciting to what extent this will also be subject to labeling in the future.

And this is exactly where the opportunity lies:

Content written by “real” users themselves will become even more important – because here, the imperfectionism of the content format alone suggests that this is content that was obviously not written by chat CPT or similar AI-driven programs.

Why User Generated Content aka the “Power of Authenticity”

Authenticity is THE keyword. (Perhaps too) often heard in the context of brands, it is, however, the greatest strength in relation to UGC. The personal touch and one’s own credible experience values that come into play when users, buyers or even fans speak highly of a brand make the whole thing credible in a special way for interested parties.

And this is also shown by the figures: Voluntarily posted reviews, TikToks or product reviews, all types of user-generated content, are so powerful that they achieve a 4 x higher click-through rate as advertisements than classic ads.

Moreover, as Stackla’s consumer marketing survey revealed, 79% of people say that user-generated content strongly influences their buying decisions (compared to 60% from 2017).

The topic is therefore undoubtedly becoming increasingly important for companies, and there are plenty of opportunities not to leave UGC to chance, but to actively initiate it and use it to your advantage.

Take your chance – motivate your users!

As Bruce Springsteen already sang: “you can’t start a fire without a spark”. But how do you ignite the spark?

There are countless ways to encourage users to write reviews and provide feedback – from greeting cards, contests and sweepstakes that encourage participation, to YouTube videos with recommendations or even story tags – when properly addressed and encouraged, the community is happy to share. But the spark doesn’t always fly. Cooperations or partnerships between brands and loyal customers can be promising here.

How Evernine supports

With professional UGC campaigns, an agency can provide the spark that companies need for sustainable and highly effective user-generated content and support them in using the above-mentioned forms across the various communication channels.

Often, companies also lack the know-how as well as the equipment to properly prepare moving images, how-to videos and content in general. However, the content does not lose the power of authenticity if approached correctly.

Especially with regard to holistic corporate communication, valuable content generated by users is of course indispensable. Take the chance and contact the experts of the Evernine Group!

Evernine supports customers in generating the content of their users, preparing it if necessary and using it for their individual purposes! As mentioned above, we also help to awaken the intrinsic motivation of the user – the user should be driven by an urgent need to communicate and create content to solve their own problems.

Source title image: AdobeStock / Master1305