What Is UGC And How Can You Use It To Increase Sales?

9th July 2022

Types of UGC and How to Use It Effectively to Increase Sales

Your users, not advertising agencies, can provide you with the best marketing tool you can use for your company. Whether you’re an online casino operator or an online merchant looking to increase sales, user-generated content (UGC) can be your best assistant to increase your brand recognition. In this article, we’ll talk about what UGC is, along with its types, and tell you how you can use it to increase your sales.

What is user-generated content?

It is possible to define any content created by users for the product or service you offer as “UGC”. The important thing here is that this content was not created by you or your advertising agency. Users share their experiences while using your product or service in different ways (reviews, comments, etc.), and all of these are considered “user-generated content”. In this context, even non-online content (for example, a letter written by a customer and sent to your company) is covered by UGC, but this term is predominantly used for online content.

What are the types of user-generated content?

User-generated content is a very broad term, and it is possible to say that it covers all kinds of things created by your users. In this regard, the main UGC types are:

Social Media Content: It is the content that your users share on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. For example, a user can share a story about your product on their Instagram account.
Reviews: Any reviews written by users about your product or service are considered UGC. These reviews can be shared on different sources. For example, comments left on the Amazon page of your product are UGC.
Video Content: Any type of video that users shoot using your product falls under UGC. Perhaps the best example of this is TikTok videos about your product.
Blog Posts: Bloggers can reach a very large audience and can also create a post about your product. The most common example of this is “how-to” articles. Since blog posts are also shared on social media, they allow you to gain recognition on multiple platforms at the same time.
Hashtag Campaigns: This is a type of UGC that can be used on any platform that supports hashtags (e.g., Twitter and Instagram). Users may choose to share a hashtag (for example, #YourProductIsAwseome) rather than a Twitter post. This is a type of UGC that can be surprisingly effective and can reach millions of concurrent users very quickly.
Surveys: Technically, this is still a type of UGC, but it is triggered by yourself. With different surveys, you can find out what your customers really think about a particular topic or product.
Interactive Events: Any kind of event that allows you to interact with users one-to-one, such as fairs, webinars or chat shows, is also counted as UGC.

Using UGC to increase your sales

You can use UGC for many different purposes and product feedback is just one of them. Above all, UGC provides you with invaluable information on how to improve/change your product or service. But in addition to this, it can also be used to increase your sales with the following methods.

Improve your product pages. Allowing users to post comments/reviews on the platforms where you sell your products (for example, on Amazon or in your own web store) will allow you to both get accurate feedback and increase your sales. Before purchasing something, users like to know what others think of that product. So, don’t just let them write a review, let them customize it too (for example, by uploading an image). The organic content you will get from here will be invaluable.
Generate organic traffic. You can use UGC on social media to increase traffic to your website. Doing so will naturally increase your sales. You can do this by agreeing with influencers or by organizing contests on your own social media accounts. The important thing here is to share links to your product or service, both directly and with hashtags, and encourage users to click on them. For example, by creating a referral program, you can have real users create UGC for you on social media.
Use video content. This also applies to video UGC. You can use video platforms such as Tiktok and YouTube in addition to Instagram and Facebook. The best way to do this is to deal with influencers or create referral programs as above. However, you can also allow product video reviews to be added to your product page: if your product appeals to a specific audience, content creators who shoot videos for that audience can create and share videos for you. For example, if you produce travel bags, you can be sure that there are dozens of YouTube channels focused on this product and that these channels will also feature your product, especially if you give them the chance to share this video on your own site.

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