User-generated content has proved to be a very valuable resource for many brands. It has delivered incredible results when it comes to Instagram for its visual nature. UGC makes Instagram profiles more believable and accessible to new users. Using UGC for growing your Instagram profile can be a great idea for quick and effective results.

What is User-Generated Content (UGC)?

When a user shares any form of content in favor of a brand on social media with their own will and without any monetary transaction, it is called User-Generated Content (UGC). The content can be in any form, such as images, videos, GIFs, blogs, text, and everything in between.

For utilizing UGC for your profile growth, you will have to post that content on your profile. However, posting somebody else’s content without their permission is classified as content theft and copyright violation. To avoid that, you can gain approval prior to posting their content and also make sure to mention the creator of the content.

You can manage UGC Rights with tools like Taggbox for hassle-free and quick permission.

Why User-Generated Content?

User-generated Content is effective because it serves the most needed aspects of a marketing strategy may it be user engagement, decrease bounce rate, higher sales, or brand trust.

User Engagement and Audience Reach

While your users post about your brand, their followers get aware of your presence in the market, which broadens your potential audience and targets a large number of people. You can encourage users to post more about your products by featuring their posts on your social pages or website as well.

Reduces Bounce Rate and Increases Sales

UGC displays the product in action in real-life scenarios and backgrounds. The real-life display by other customers gives new users and visitors the final nudge to buy the product. Many people are in doubt until they actually buy the product, and UGC can work well to clear those doubts by displaying your products in action.

Increases Brand Trust

The most significant factor here is that UGC is an unpaid form of promotion. It portrays that the users who are posting about your products genuinely mean what they post. Otherwise, they would not have spent their time to post something they don’t mean.
They act as brand ambassadors and offer their followers to buy your products. They also share their experience and views on the product that gives new users more clarity and awareness about your products. All of this combined increases trust for your brand.

Works as customer reviews and ratings

Apart from the fact that UGC is customer reviews and ratings in a new form, it works well to convince people. Studies show that 92% of people look at reviews and ratings before making a purchase, and UGC can help influence their decision very smoothly. By showcasing the product in use as well as stating how good the product is, users make the buyer’s decision a no brainer.

Builds a community

The group of users posting about your brand and using your products get a platform to connect and inspire each other with the views and posts. This creates a sense of community amongst them, which adds credibility to your brand attracting more users to be a part of that community.

How to Build Your UGC Strategy

Before you plan to incorporate UGC into your brand, make sure if your brand can generate UGC or not. There can be many reasons behind UGC not working for your brand. If you have a too-small audience or your audience is not very engaging, you can have a problem generating UGC. Instagram being a highly visual platform needs creative and engaging people to create content for you.

If you think you can make it, here is how you can go on with your strategy:

Step one: Choose your theme
Choose a theme your brand will focus on. Choose the kind of emotion your brand will target, such as motivation, love, positivity, affection, anger, or anything you seem fit with your brand and your products.

Step two: Create your branded hashtag
You have to come up with a hashtag that you can use for your brand’s marketing. The hashtag should be short, sensible, and simple so that people can easily remember and use it. The ideal length of a hashtag is 11 or less characters.
Make sure your hashtag can relate to your brand or your brand motto.

Step three: Hashtag Promotion
If you want your users to use your branded hashtag, you will have to promote it and make them aware of it. You can also plan any contests and giveaways using the hashtag, which will encourage people to post with your hashtag too.

Once your hashtag comes into notice, your users can connect it with your brand. When people start posting and sharing content with the use of your hashtag, you will begin to get content.

Step four: Hashtag Monitoring
This is the most crucial step, you have to keep track of the posts to choose the best out of them to post on your profile. Once you select the posts, make sure you plan your posts and captions.
As I mentioned earlier, also mention the creator or gain proper permission before posting the content on your profile.

You’re good to conquer the market.

Your Call

Still worried? Relax and trust your users and their content for acquiring more users and sales. Incorporating UGC with your Instagram profile will definitely help your brand grow and step a level ahead. Anyway, who knows about the content users want to see better than the users?

Once your Instagram Profile becomes a hit, you can embed it on your website for better results. Embedding your Instagram feed on your website can work wonders for you, you can use it to drive your users to your social media handles and also give your website a more vibrant and attractive look with UGC.

This contributed article was written by Anne Griffin, a digital marketer and technical writer.

Yes, I said it. It’s finally time to publicly state that the video completion rate (or VCR) metric is no longer useful. Sure, for many years since the metric was first introduced, agencies and marketers alike have relied on the VCR standard as a way to assure brands and clients that they have, in fact, proved that a set of eyeballs were engaged and we had their attention for the duration of a video. It seemed logical. The metric would weed out accidental clicks to video links and players. It would also weed out casual viewers who only watched the first 10 or 15 seconds of a video and moved on. But that was about as much assurance that the platforms had delivered our messages to a large number of eyeballs, as we were going to receive.

Fast forward to today. The cracks in that model are all too apparent. Let’s start with the very recent example of Facebook being forced to pay a settlement of $40 million, because of allegedly miscalculating video metrics. Of course, as these things typically go, Facebook admitted no wrongdoing, agreed to pay the relatively paltry settlement, and maintains the suit is “without merit.” But the complaint alleged that “average viewership metrics were not inflated by only 60%-80%; they were inflated by some 150 to 900%.” Houston, I think we might have an industry problem.

Believe it or not, that’s not even the worst of it.

Put in the simplest of terms, video completion rate does not equal results and success. Not even close. Let me offer an example in order to paint a common scenario that I hear about, over and over. One network marketing executive expressed to me that their external agency only provides efficiency-based metrics in their reports, such as VCR and CPI (cost per install), which the cable network simply doesn’t really care about anymore. Why? Quite simple – digital is already inherently efficient. Instead, cable and TV providers want to see how their campaigns are actually driving viewership.

Unfortunately, agencies are still drinking the proverbial industry Kool-Aid, because the majority of them still push that metric on their clients. I’m not certain whether they actually believe in it or it’s just that they implicitly understand that they have no access or insight into real ratings data that they can work with and optimize toward. So, inevitably what happens is, they spin VCR as a valuable measurement tool, and have been for many years now. However, VCR is not a measure of ratings and views, in the same way networks think about them. Another network executive recently told me point-blank, “the metrics our agency reports back to us are BS and have nothing to do with tune-in.” Chilling.

I heard from another TV marketing executive who said one of the biggest complaints from TV brands about their agencies is they focus on top and middle funnel metrics such as VCR because it is simply all that they can control. Sure, CPI qualifies as more of a bottom of funnel metric, but in order for networks & content providers to optimize, they need to be shown solid metrics for real engagement & audience attention – not simply efficiency metrics like VCR and CPI.

In recent years, much ink has been spilled about TV being ‘lean back’ and digital being ‘lean forward.’ With huge swaths of video consumption continually moving toward digital and everything becoming more ‘lean forward,’ one might think that this makes VCR more relevant. Actually, quite the opposite. While true that everything is becoming more ‘lean forward,’ all that VCR really tells you is, the consumer watched the video to the end (or they let it run and walked away to do something else). It does not measure how many people clicked a link on the video or trailer, taking them to a particular MVPD’s show, nor does it in any way bridge the chasm between the two.

One truth about consumers in the digital age – they will always gravitate toward the path of least resistance. No one is going to leave a video and separately navigate on their own to an MVPD to watch the show you just enticed them to watch. Agencies working with networks, MVPDs, movie studios, streaming services and content providers simply must begin to find a way to track marketing campaign’s success in moving consumers along the pathways toward increased viewership.

This guest article was written by Kevin Hill, Founder/CEO of VuPulse, a post-click marketing platform. He has 20 years of experience as a marketing and entertainment industry executive, including companies such as Polaroid Fotobar and Comcast NBCUniversal.