#008 What Is UGC? Do I Need It And How Can My Business Use It?

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Having your customers showcase how great you are can give your brand an extra level of authenticity. Consumers are hungry for brands to feature real customers, real products, and highlight real experiences. Encouraging users to generate relating to your brand in the form of posts, reviews, videos, or testimonials produces engaging, reliable content. Our clients are leveraging UGC to create a pool of posts to pull from in their monthly content calendars.

Biggest Takeaways From This Episode

UGC = User-Generated Content: Anything that’s posted by people who are using your services or interacting with you online. It includes reviews, testimonials, photos, videos, or even text posts where people share an authentic experience about your company.
User-Generated Content is extremely valuable to your brand. Instead of posting about how great you are, your customers can help authenticate and validate your brand experience for you. Consumers find UGC extremely reliable.
Brands are leveraging UGC as content to help showcase that authentic experience. One of our clients collected UGC from their customers and asked them if they could post their remarkable stories on their page
An active UGC program can help you generate a ton of content that you can pull from in your social publishing calendar. Then you can add in your timely content!
UGC can help your brand amplify its growth on social, even if you haven’t had an active presence for a while. You can gather photos and stories to create a bank of images before you really start publishing!
There are definitely best practices and rules for getting UGC. Ask for permission and give credit. You don’t want to upset someone who has been bragging about you by stealing their content without their permission.
Using flattery is super helpful. Make sure that you tell the user how excited you are or showcase your appreciation. It can totally boost engagement.
Get into a habit of looking for UGC and start listening. Use location tags, hashtags, reviews, visitor posts, check-ins, and mentions.
Don’t incentivize reviews. You don’t want to get stuck in platform jail. Trust us, it happens.

Want your question to be answered on the generation social media podcast? Tell us what it is here!

Transcript

This text below is a straight up audio transcript of the episode. In our humble opinion, we think the audio podcast sounds much better in its original form. We have not edited the transcription below so there are indeed some grammar errors (some quite funny, in-fact).

Hi, this is Chris Severn. I'm the customer success specialist with Chatterkick. And today I'm joined by Molly.

Hi, I'm Molly Ernst and I am an ad strategist at Chatterkick. Today our question is, what is UGC? What does that mean? Do I need it? How do I get it? Yes, you need it. Yeah. That I think is our position on UGC today. I think so. So, all right, we're done. No, we're not. First of all, what is UGC? Let's break it out. User Generated Content, user generated content. So it's anything that's posted not by yourself, the company, but by people who are using your services or interacting with you online. So that's photos, videos it includes like reviews and testimonials or things that people post about you in text form as well. But it's that sort of word of mouth on social media and that authentication from your audience about who you are as a company and how they interact with you.

Nice. I think that sums it up pretty good. But, so that's what it is. But why, why is that important? Like why would that be? Maybe better than just me making my own social media posts.

Because it compared to a brand posting about how great they are having users post about how great you are or showcasing how great you are gives an extra level of authenticity. It's sort of that especially in the Midwest like we like to not brag about ourselves. It's so much easier if you let somebody else brag about you for you. So sharing that content doesn't feel like your promoting your business as much as you're just sharing an experience that someone else had and you're letting them promote your business for you. So it's a really great way to show people a really authentic view of what other people think about you and get that validation from your users and your customers and your, anybody you interact with. Yeah.

Nice. Have we, well that's not a great question, but I think we get that question from different clients, but we've also not necessarily forced on people. We've had clients that have already had, I'm thinking of a certain client in particular, they launched a product, they already had really a great brand, just didn't really have an online presence. But once they started, you know, on Facebook there was just all that content, pretty much all their content is generated from the users and like their, how they use it. And we just had a product launch. They said basically this was the best product launch they've ever had. Do you just want to talk more about that. Like how did that UGC like play into that? Do you think that was the only way to go or what just how did that amplify that, that message?

Yeah, so that particular client I think was in a really niche kind of position and it was it's a content bucket sort of that, that no, they hadn't thought about before. So the client was really new to playing in the social landscape in terms of marketing. So when talked to them, it was a lot of, they were opening their ears to what people were saying online. Which is important to do as a business, but it's also important to think about how you can use what people are saying and not just taking that feedback for yourself as a company, but then putting it back out onto a digital landscape. So, when we started helping them listen to what people were saying online, we had all of these great cases of UGC where people who are using their products were talking about how much they love their products and how well their products worked.

So, it was, it was fun to be able to sort of open their eyes to that possibility cause they're not the only client. There's a few different clients we talk to that they just haven't, it hasn't occurred to them yet that that is a source of content that they can use. They don't have to pay for a photo shoot. They don't have to pay for a video shoot. They don't have to try and, you know, fish for compliments. It's already existing and they can just draw from that pool. So it worked really well and it helped kind of show that it was a real authentic company, which was so important, especially because since that client in particular was new to the social landscape, they had been, the conversation was already happening without them being there, but we were trying to help build up their profiles at the same time. And yeah, just really make sure that they felt like they had been on social for awhile. Yeah. And that was a really great way to help build that quickly to show like, you know, in the past years, even though they maybe didn't have a social presence, other people had been talking about them in the social space.

Right. Well, and they sort of solicited all these pictures even before having the social presence, like they have, you know, "send in your picture of you and your award and we'll give you, I think it was like a jacket or something." And so they already had sort of this like bank of images, right?

Yeah. They knew that they wanted to, yeah. They knew that it was important to collect content, but they were doing it in an analog fashion where people would mail things in and that process is so much more efficient and so much easier to do in a digital space. It's so much easier to send a photo over email or Facebook Messenger even is a great place to collect UGC when people, when you ask for it. So it's been really fun to work with them and just digitize some of those processes and kind of gently lead the client and see like, look, isn't this nice, isn't this easy?

Yeah. Well let's talk about that then. Like how would you go about like, what's already there? And I'm thinking like testimonials or reviews, you know, on Facebook or Google, like those are if you have them already, they're just sitting there. But going about gathering those or using those all the way to like, maybe setting up a plan or a funnel in place to like have this on a regular basis. So like those reviews, would you need to ask permission to use those or how would you use those in content?

Think a good rule of thumb,that is an interesting part of UGC is that because it was created by someone else, you don't own it. Uand there is a lot of clear guidelines as to what you can and can't use. And from a legal perspective, and I'm a good rule of thumb is when you can try and ask permission.Because even if you can use something legally, you don't want to upset someone who has been bragging about you on social media by using something that they created without their permission. Because somebody who's already shown that they're going to be really vocal online about your company, right? And right now they are somebody who's, you know, praising you, right? You don't want them to turn on you and upset them.

And it's actually really interesting. So TikTok got in trouble for this. The platform has been running ads on Snapchat and on Facebook and Instagram and other platforms to try and get people to use TikTok more. And they are using videos from the platform, which makes sense. And they didn't tell the users that they were going to be featured in their ads. And there's a really clear part of the user agreement on TikTok that says, well, the users still own the copyright. They are the creators. They own the copyright. By using the TikTok platform, you give TikTok basically a free pass. There's a bunch of legal jargon, but basically TikTok can use whatever you want. And it was an interesting reminder that like you're always renting space. Yeah. On social media platforms, but now there's TikTok users who are upset with the platform itself and social platform. Right. And there's however many like thousands, millions of videos on TikTok.

It would not have been difficult to just ask, pick, you know, however many you wanted to use, ask for permission. And if they said no, there's alternatives, there's so many options, you still have hundreds and thousands of other right options. Yeah. Yeah. And for other brands that maybe don't have millions of options available to them, if you get somebody who says, no, I mean, just from a moral perspective, I think it's best to respect that. But yeah, so my general rule of thumb is always if you, if there is a way for you to contact someone and ask them if you can use what they've created, it's better to do it. If you can do that privately I prefer to do it privately versus in a public comment just in case. Yeah. Somebody who's since had a bad experience. Yeah. And if you can't do it from your business brand page, that's okay.

If you can reach out to them through a personal account and you're comfortable with that and with them knowing that you're associated with the business, then that's okay too. Just say, Hey, my name is Molly. I work at Chatterkick and Chatterkick loves this post that you put out. And we'd really like to share it from our page. Is that okay? And most of the time people are thrilled to be involved and it's a really great way to reward your loyal customers or clients or people that you work with. Well there's probably like kind of an art to that ask to not just, Hey, can we use your posts for our marketing materials so that we can make a bunch of money. It's like, Hey,

Your message would be great to showcase to maybe potential customers that you're having such a great experience. Would you want to share that? I think that's probably like a softer way going.

Yeah, I mean it just, flattery gets you everywhere. So something about like I really love the way you captured the vibe or pump them up a little bit. Yeah. Give them, tell them why you want to use their content too.And then another thing that I know we do at Chatterkick is if we can tag the user then when you share their content to give them another pat on the back and show other users if we're going to use your content, we're going to tell people that came from you and you're going to get like a fun feature.

Well, it's such a great way to boost like engagement, too. Like, if I see that this brand shared my post and I'm tagged, maybe I'll comment on it like, Hey, thanks. But then, or I'll maybe I'll share it to my page. It just, it opens it up to so many more people seeing that and then other people jumping on like, Hey, great job Chris. Or you know.

Yeah, yeah, definitely. And what's great is if you start making that a regular part of the content that you're publishing you will find that other users who are also using your products or are using your services are far more likely to send you their stuff without you having to ask anymore. There's a couple of clients that we have that happen with at Chatterkick and it's really fun too. They've been doing it for so long that there's a, a reliable amount of content we know we can collect, just keep getting over time and we just know it's going to roll in because it's a part of the culture of that Facebook account now or that social profile. They just expect that people, and then it's not even people sending you things, you're going to get tagged in other user posts and it snowballs really, really nicely. Right,

Right. So that can be part of that strategy. Like you said, it kinda just is part of their plan sort of either you can back off of what you're doing, maybe I don't have to create less in the business or I can still be creating the same amount and now that just amplifies it. How, oh see, I lost my train of thought there. Sorry.

I mean it snowballs really well, but there's also that it, it can be a little difficult to get used to it and get into a habit and get started doing it. So I think that if you want to implement it, it's a strategy you can implement really quickly. Which is great. The first step is just to kind of open up your ears and eyes and start listening. Find out from location tags, like pick a local, if you're locally bound, like start looking at local posts. Figure out which hashtags people would use to tag content that was with you. Look at your reviews on Google and Facebook. Look at visitor posts is a great place where content comes in. And if you have stuff, so get it together, Polish it up, make it look nice, ask for permission, schedule it out to run.

And you've now added UGC to your content mix. So that's a really fast to get that process started. But then if you maybe don't find everything, if you're new to some platforms or maybe your audience isn't ready and waiting for you on social, cause that can happen, right? It's not hard to get started. You can literally put out just a text post, depending on how engaged your following is on social media, you can just start by asking for it. Just say, Hey, send us a selfie of you with our product. Or show us how you use X. It really depends on like what you're trying to showcase, but it's so easy. You literally just have to ask for it. If you've got a good following that engages with you regularly on social, you're likely to get things. If you're struggling to kind of get that started, you can move more towards a rewards base.

You can the difficulty with starting it with rewards back to users is that sometimes that becomes a set expectation moving forward and it's not exactly what you want, so you have to be a little bit careful there. But yeah, just really making sure that you're watching key hashtags that are related to you and your business. You're watching when somebody tags you in things. That's the best way to find UGC. And once you start asking for it on your profile, that's. It's really fun the first time you ask for things and then to just watch the comments, fill up with photos and we're like, okay, we're good for the next six months. We're good.

How long say that doesn't come and say you ask. It doesn't really come in, but you're talking about, you know, looking for other posts or looking for hashtags. Like, is that 10 minutes a day? Is that an hour a day? Is that maybe one day of the week? Like just practically, and it doesn't have to be an exact number, but what would you say, how much time should I devote to that effort of trying to collect that UGC?

Well what we do and what I consider best practice is you should be checking those kinds of avenues where people are trying to interact with you actively. Any incoming messages or interactions. You should be checking that daily. And that's what we do. We check it multiple times every day. Right. So if you're already doing that, you're likely to see the UGC as it comes in. If you are doing maybe more of an outreach or where you're trying to start interactions with people or if you arelooking just for UGC, I think that if you know where you want to look already, that can take 10 minutes. I mean, 10 minutes a day would be plenty. Yeah. I mean you could probably do five minutes a day, honestly, if you already know where you want to look, right. The better your UGC content program is going the longer it's going to take you because the more you should have. Right. Which would take great filter through it. Yeah. but yeah, it's not something that should add a ton to your normal routine of just checking the page itself. Yeah.

So UGC is good. It is good. It makes your process a little bit smoother, hopefully a little bit easier once you're kind of established there. It also makes the message better because of that social proof coming from other people, not just you saying I'm awesome. What about, are there any taboos, and I guess the only thing I'm thinking of is can you say like give rewards for reviews or like is there things that you can't do in terms of a sort of a compensation kind of thing?

That's true. Facebook will, if you are looking to get more reviews on your page and you offer any kind of incentive for review Facebook has some really strict guidelines on that and I'm pretty sure you have to make sure that it's for any review. You can't say like, if you give me a five star review, I'm going to give you this reward. And even even incentivizing reviews at all is a little iffy and I would be nervous to do it. Without like proofreading Facebook's guidelines many times just in case. Yeah. But you can, you know, we talked to that a client we were talking about earlier who had just gotten started with that and we had good UGC that existed on the, on the platform already, but we didn't have a bottomless pit of it. So we talked to them about going off of the digital profiles to find UGC and to encourage your existing customers, your existing audience to create it for you without offering a reward.

And that can be as easy as go to your customer list, find your top five, top five. Find people who, you know, as customers are great, you know that they love you, you know that they've been back a few times. You just send them an email, a really personal or if you know them really well personally, give them a call. Just say, Hey, we're, you know, we're putting some effort into our Facebook. We really want to connect with people and show them why we're great. You know, why we're great because you've been buying from us for this long and we were hoping that you would help us tell that story. So if you have any photos or videos or if you'd like to send us some words about why you love our stuff, we would be really happy to use that and then we could tag you and right and showcase you on our page. You know, still that flattery that like we're going to make you a star like kind of a vibe, but you can do that off of social platforms as well. If you know, there's some people who would be really great to feature on your page, go ahead and reach out just to get you started. And hopefully they not only do it once, but they continue to send you things. And you've started your own influencer program, right? Just like that. Yeah.

That's sort of that next level, right? Maybe another episode. Yeah.

UGC is like baby influencers. Is really what it is because everybody kind of wants to be an influencer. They want to be a VJ and be like, yeah, I'm super cool. This brand posted me on their page. So on a regular basis they keep posting me, gosh, they won't stop posting my stuff. They're blowing up my tags. Just so fancy. Yeah. That's what everybody wants. We've talked about how users generate content, but I also wanted to touch on how users are consuming content, sort of at some stereotypes and the reality of different types of users and how they use social. So we do have the social media usage information for one particular type of user. This is for an early thirties male who is in marketing. So I'll share this with you too. Do you want to just talk

Yeah. Kind of highlight it. Yeah. Let's just all apps. So I guess spending time on his phone five hours a day and of that, Oh, that's of the week. So this is showing his app usage for the week. He's got 36 hours of time on his phone. Of that 11 hours spent on Facebook. And that is by and far the highest, I think the next. Next down, I mean there's messages, there's phone, there's the web browser, but YouTube for an hour. So 12 hours on social media. Most of that coming from Facebook. So let's see, early thirties Facebook, I mean that doesn't really blow me away. I think I might expect to see maybe some more Instagram or maybe even Twitter. I feel like, I guess it depends on what he's looking at. So if he's in marketing already, I wonder if he's doing research. I feel like that's probably my Facebook usage for the most part is just, you know, because of work and you know, the pages that we manage, that sort of thing. So I'm curious as maybe what he's looking at. But that's an opportunity while he's on Facebook during the day to either have your content in front of him or maybe be showing ads to that demographic if you're trying to reach him, I guess. Does anything jump out there?

Yeah, I just really enjoy seeing the breakdown of categories. So the weekly total like you said, is 36 hours. And then the three categories that that's broken into is social networking, productivity and entertainment, entertainment is at two hours. Productivity is about four hours and social networking is 17 and a half hours. Which I think is really funny just because of this, the stereotype that like kids these days are always on their phones and their social media and this person's in their thirties. Thanks. I thought that was a really good impression too. But yeah, so I can, I would definitely say this person is probably not just on Facebook for like their own entertainment. I would say it's probably a lot of seeing what else is going on on the app and saying connected, I would be willing to bet since they're in marketing, I know a lot of us at Chatterkick are on.

We're in multiple groups that are marketing and advertising focused. And I think thatFacebook's shift towards trying to promote groups and group content more. I would be willing to bet that a lot of that time is spent in groups. Maybe having more industry based discussions or just something with that amount of time, that overwhelming 11 hours is a lot. I also, I agree, I think it's interesting that there is far less Instagram and I wonder if that's male versus female likelihood. And then just from the difference in terms of time on their phone to only like two hours, 40 minutes on their phone and tells me that this person, they might be in marketing but they don't do what you do. They're probably not communicating with clients nearly as much with how much, because the email app doesn't even rank very high on their list.

So yeah, I think if we were trying to reach this person, there's a lot of different ways to reach people in different industries. If you're trying to reach somebody in marketing, there are some really cool ways, especially if they are a digital marketer and they may be, are connected to different Facebook pages. There's some cool ways you can reach people that do marketing on Facebook. And, and I think finding them, this person on Facebook would be great, but I also think it'd be fun to if you're trying to get at somebody in marketing, just making sure you're really involved in groups in the industry to try and start a conversation and get to know someone better. And then depending on what you're trying to talk to them about lead in that way.

Yeah. Well, and with that be authentic. I mean, don't go into those groups and say, Hey, look at me. What's up? I'm here, but like going to answering questions, asking questions, engaging with other people's questions or content. So yeah,

And it's really, it's, it feels really daunting. I've done that personally. It feels very daunting and there's a little bit of that like imposter syndrome sometimes where you're like, what do I know? How could I share anything for this person? But it's really kind of validating and it's like a nice pat on the back when you're able to answer someone's question and then they comment back and like, thanks like that really helped. And like it did. Oh, I'm so happy. Yeah, I did. Yeah, I know. I'm not proud of that. Just anytime I'm feeling low, I flip open my screenshots to the times I've helped people. It just is nice. But yeah, so I think that person's probably in groups a lot.

Social Media, inspirationChatterkickNovember 5, 2019user-generated content, content