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User generated content is an amazing way to engage your audience, make them feel appreciated and impact your bottom line. What does it mean and how do you use it in your social media marketing strategy? Sit down and let us illuminate you.

What is user generated content?

Put simply, user generated content (UGC) is anything posted online by consumers. That 5* review on your Facebook page? UGC. That Instagram photo of your customer sipping a milkshake in your gloriously air conditioned cafe? UGC. That YouTube video review of your services with 10k views? UGC.

So why is it so powerful? Because word of mouth is still the gold standard in marketing and UGC is the digital equivalent. If somebody loves your product or service enough to post online about it without being paid to do so, it must be good. When you share those posts on your brand’s social platforms not only do your followers see your great reviews and happy customers, you give the user who shared it the warm fuzzies (don’t lie, we know you love the warm fuzzies) and encourage other people to do the same.

Person taking a photo of their brunch at a café representing ideal user generated content.

How do you use UGC in your marketing?

There are a range of options depending on how much content you have and how creative you want to be with it. We think mixing it up is the best option; variety is the spice of life.

ReTweet/ReGram/Share

First you can simply re-post the original post, being sure to shout-out the user, a thank you wouldn’t go amiss either. Simple but effective and a great way to drop in this kind of content to your feeds. Reshares like this are also a great way to populate your Stories, we shared 10 more Stories ideas in our last blog post.

Collages, carousels & albums

If you’re overrun with UGC, you lucky devil, sharing every post individually might be overkill. In that case why not include several in one post. How you do this will depend on the platform your posting on but keep in mind that Facebook has albums, Instagram has carousels and collages work everywhere, just make sure you tag everyone in them!

Video

We know, we’re like a broken record, but video really is the key to social media right now. Whether you make a simple slideshow from the images, videos and comments singing your praises or you opt for something more fanciful, video offers you not only the UGC warm fuzzies but also a very sexy boost in the algorithms. Win-win!

Want to find out how we can make your user generated content even sexier?  Drop us an email.