8 Experts’ Hacks to Generate Zillions of UGC (User Generated Content)

Are you still stuck with producing user generated content for your brand? Not able to figure out ways to promote your users in creating it?

Don’t be disappointed anymore. Our community experts have shared few hacks through which you can easily get the community engagement for UGC .

UGC

What is UGC?

User-generated content is the content generated by the fans of the brand/ members of the community/users of your platform without any monetary thing included in it. It can be of any form, for example — images, videos, tweets, infographics, comments, blogs, ads, status updates etc.

According to a study conducted by Reevoo, nowadays people connect more with the brand if the advertisement contains user generated content.

Source: Reevoo

UGC helps in gaining the trust and building the relationships with the customers.

Source: SalesForce

Therefore, to understand it better, this topic was picked by Asha Chaudhry on our community [Community Folks] and the community experts shared their learnings.

Before we move forward, let’s understand how to categorise the users of our community by Arbab Usmani.

Basically, there are four types of users-

• Dead or sleeper
• Enablers/admins/volunteers
• Engager — The person who engages with the content and our target for UGC
• Pusher — who has already generated the content

Now, with respect to these users, let’s learn the Top 8 hacks given by our community experts to get UGC-

1. 
   

   Power of Ask- We can ask the engager to post about something they want, shamelessly. The power of asking is one of the most powerful things in the life of a community manager, ask them and convert them into a pusher. [By- Arbab Usmani]According to Asha, sending a topic to them, which is related to their area of expertise helps the people to express themselves in a better way. All their learnings can be put together in a blog and rolled out for the public feedback. And she calls it #WisdomoftheCrowd

By- Puneet Aggrawal

2. Gratification of User’s Effort- Acknowledging the efforts of your members build a strong relationship and connection towards the brand. This can be done by straightforward prompts, gratification on important metrics of participation such as posts, pics, answers etc [By- Priya Sood]

Giving specials mentions to Top Content Creators in the Newsletter and sharing links to their articles is an effective way to celebrate UGC. Giving virtual rewards like a Special Badge to the Top Contributor of the week has always worked well with Asha.

Below is the example of the shoutout given to the top contributors of our community.

Leaderboard

3. Expert’s round-up- It’s easier to get a discussion on a topic if it is initiated by an expert. He round-ups on a topic and this brings out the best from the bests. [ By- Paras Pundir]

Anuj says that, anything which leads to someone getting public recognition to a wide audience works. For example, “How would you……” type questions asked to the members and the best of them included in a roundup post and for contests, usually make them put efforts and give thoughts on it.Example- Below is our blog which was driven through his hack.

http://bit.ly/BrandGrowthBlog

4. Contests and giveaways- This can be applied on both:

#Offline- During the programs, asking speakers/presenters to announce rewards for the best questions that they can select towards the end of the program, motivates people to ask good questions.

#Online- Another thing that can be done is to run a contest and make them answer the question or send their entries for it. A small token has always helped in making our members create content. [ By- Jatin Chaudhry]

Online contests help in the engagement of a larger portion of our audience. Contests are a mode of indirect conversation. People tend to respond to the contests which include prizes and giveaways.

By- Jeremydavidson

• Tagging the influencers of the community- People follow others and try adapting the good qualities in their life. Therefore, targeting multiple respected members of the community to share first is a good hack. More often than not, it gets others to start sharing as well. [ By- Kartic Rakhra]
• Flashy templates for users- People usually want to get featured or mentioned somewhere on the social media platform where they are able to share it and get visibility among their circle. Sharing a fancy, beautiful template where they just have to fill it effortlessly is quite a good hack to engage people. It can be like a ready to make post/blog. [By- Pranidhi Puri]

By- YoutQuote

• Enhance UGC and share- The content provided by the members can be enhanced further into an infographic, video or slideshow and shared with the community. This adds value to efforts made by our members, makes them feel important and encourages them to share more content.

Our Last Expert RoundUp

• Targeting Detractors- Last but important one, detractors are those users who are not likely to promote the brand. For this, we try to gauge the things they appreciate and create an environment for the same. Once this user is under your control, he/she is likely to talk about the brand everywhere. Although, this won’t be a spontaneous process but will be impactful. [By- Mohit Mahajan]

Therefore, in this digital world, brands need to update themselves according to the latest trends. This is where they get the attention of the users and users promote them in some or the other way.

These were few hacks shared by our community experts which will help your brand to achieve more and more user-generated content, hence, enhancing the essence of your community and brand belongingness.

Are we missing any important point here? It’s a community-driven blog, if you have any latest hack, do add your thoughts in the comment section and it will be updated here.