4 Best Practices for Building a User-generated Campaign

Each week on Socially Stacked, we feature a social media marketing Campaign to inspire marketers and ShortStack users. User-generated content (UGC) is any form of content that is created by a user or a fan. These types of Campaigns are hot right now because they're a great way to collect insightful data from followers and build brand loyalty. People on social media have a lot to say and are looking to give their opinions and tell stories if given the right outlet. A UGC Campaign can be the perfect place to get high levels of engagement while simultaneously collecting valuable consumer data.

4 Things to Remember When Building a User-generated Campaign

1. Target people's passions: User-generated Campaigns usually ask users to submit a story, meaningful photo or video. You're more likely to get the high level of engagement you're looking for if you tap into your fan's passions when asking for information. In today's example the non-profit End Allergies Together (E-A-T) did a great job at this by asking fans to submit content about why they want to see a cure for food allergies.Tapping into passion is an easy task for non-profits, but other brands can benefit from this as well. Let's take ShortStack.com for example. We don't necessarily have a product that people are directly passionate about but our users are mostly social media marketers. Using user-generated Campaigns we've been able to gather a lot of feedback and testimonials about our product by asking our fans to share the Campaigns they've built or tell the story behind their Campaigns.

‍2. Provide multiple ways for people to submit their content: Some people respond best to words, some like photos and some people want to hop in front of a camera to tell their story. With ShortStack forms it's easy to add multiple means of entry on your Campaign, so we recommend providing people with a variety of options for giving you their feedback.

‍3. Reward entrants: We'd like to think that people love brands enough to give their opinions for nothing in return, but most of the time a little incentive goes a long way. You can amp up your UGC campaign with a small prize option for anyone who enters or for some extra highlights on your website, blog or social networks. We've seen several companies run UGC Campaigns to collect testimonials for their website and it's also common for people to take the entries they receive and highlight them on their social cover photos or in ads.

‍4. Use a Hashtag: Most businesses are looking for engagement from their followers and from new customers that may not have discovered them yet. A great way to get that extra interaction is to attach a hashtag to your UGC Campaign. Hashtags allow you to bring Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest into your promotion strategy.

Example of a User-generated Campaign

End Allergies Together is a non-profit that's committed to finding a cure to food allergies. They created a UGC Campaign in order to raise awareness about their brand and engage with their audience. They have a couple incentives for people to enter including multiple giveaways of E-A-T gear and sharing people's stories on their social media pages. Outside of their online promotion of their Campaign, E-A-T has street teams in cities throughout the United States that are handing out information about the non profit and about the Campaign.