Jul 25, 2019
When you are to make a buying decision, who will you trust more – the advertisement of a brand or the advice from a genuine buyer? A human relies on the opinions of colleagues, friends, or relatives who have used the product more than unfamiliar models advertising it. The principle of the user-generated content is based particularly on this concept. This all is about letting your customers do the whole advertising for you. Anyway, the social proof of authenticity is not the only benefit of UGC. There are other ways you can use user-generated content in the benefit of your brand and right now, at InstaBF, we are going to discuss them on the example of several big brands’ success.
SEO Benefits
Positive reviews you get from your customers can significantly improve the SEO rankings. According to the statistics, around 25% of the search results counted on the 20 largest brands of the world are links to UGC.
Boost Instagram Reach and Growth
IGC is tightly connected with social media and Instagram in particular. A happy and content customer ends up tagging friends in UGC and that automatically leads to outreach and the growth of the brand’s following.
Acquire Audience Insights
For a smart brand, UGC can be a real gold mine of data. Having a huge bunch of opinions and feedback by real users of your products, you can get precious insights about what to drop or improve in your services or products.
Big Brands Using UGC to Get Inspired
Some big brands are reaping the benefits of user-generated content. You, as a small Instagram brand, can learn much from them. Let’s go over some of them so that you get a better picture of what to do yourself.
This brand perfectly knows how to make customers promote the brand. Let’s take the popular #RedCupContest launched every December. The brand asks its fans to submit images of their coffees to win a gift card by the brand. And their customers always look forward to participating in the contest. Starbucks garners around 30k photos of red cups with coffee during every contest. All this leads to brand exposure and a boost in sales after all participants have to buy red cups from Starbucks to take a photo.
Delaware North is a global food and hospitality company. It publishes a huge number of UGC-powered hubs with amazing content from their outdoor enthusiasts to encourage fans to book more outdoor adventures while integrating social depth among its websites. This company uses its consumers as brand advocates and capitalizes on the authentic UGC that they get from customers worldwide. For sharing their best vacation photos on Instagram, the brand’s fans have such hashtags as #LizardIsland, #EIQuestro, #TenayaLodge, etc. In only several months, the brand received over half a million social wall views across the websites.
There is a special hashtag existing (#BMWRepost) that perhaps every BMW owner on Instagram is aware of. They use it to share Insta posts of their rides on BMW cars. Creating the hashtag is a mutually-beneficial step as BMW fans get a chance to show off their rides while the brand gets tons of free advertising. Adhering to BMW’s example, you can create an avenue on Instagram for your consumers to brag about your brand and products.
Feb 11, 2019
User-Generated Content Campaigns were definitely a hit on Instagram and the past 2018 year was highly fertile for this type of business. Actually, as statistics show, over 75% of people agree that User-Generated content makes any content posted more authentic, while over 40% of marketing professionals consider UGC invaluable. If you run an Instagram business yourself, most probably you have already got assured yourself how beneficial UGC can appear for your business! However, to get inspiration for this year, right here at InstaBF’s blog, we are going to review some fantastic 2018 UGC campaigns standing out from the rest!
Copa90
Copa90 showed one of the most succeeded UGC campaigns of the past year. They used Snapchat shots of their fans in different languages from around the world and posted them on their social network page. This way they showed the World Cup from the fans’ perspective and gained over 31 million views in only 45 days!
Netflix
Netflix has used UGC for quite a long time. But one of their UGC mega-campaigns devoted to the launch of the new season of Stranger Things brought them fabulous results! They re-grammed posts from influencers and fans, thus gaining as many as 125K new followers in just a fortnight!
The Voice
The partnership between the hit TV show and Wayin company was especially resultful. They captured reactions of people to the participants of the show when they made their performances and the judges’ decisions, then posted them right during the live show under the hashtag #KindComments. The campaign went on during the all 8 episodes.
Starbucks
This company has tremendous popularity which was increased due to their #WhiteCupContest. The brand’s fans were asked to create their own designs on their cups and the most amazing pattern would become the basis of the upcoming limited editions of Starbucks cups rolled out in the company’s shops. During the whole three weeks that the UGC campaign lasted, the brand got over 4,000 entries!
Calvin Klein
Who wouldn’t agree to share photos of themselves wearing only underwear? Well, the question missed a significant point that makes it sensible from fatuous – … wearing only underwear by Calvin Klein?! The brand organized a UGC marketing campaign that might not seem prospective from the first sight, yet, as it turned out, the campaign was a real hit on Instagram! It was a huge success and people kept on sharing their photos with underwear and Calvin Klein kept on posting them! Perhaps the participation in the campaign of such celebrities as the Kardashians played a big role, who knows!
Apple
Apple is among those unique brands which know well the worth of UGC. Last year they organized a campaign #ShotOnIphone. The latter was aimed at encouraging Apple consumers to share images taken with their iPhones. The purpose of this campaign was to highlight the quality of the company’s cameras, and people were more than glad to participate in it. In the end, Apple chose the most succeeded shares and posted them on their official Instagram account!
Nov 2, 2018
As an Instagram marketer, you must have already faced the need to repost a User Generated Content, haven’t you? Before you hurry to do that, it’s worth reminding you that this must be done exceptionally on a legal basis. It’s really crucial to understand the rules of reposting on IG to protect your brand before you decide to curate any IG feed with UGC.
This post of InstaBF, a trustworthy Instagram and IGTV provider, is dedicated to the actual rules of reposting on Instagram. Keep track of it, and you won’t ever have your brand threatened.
Why It’s So Important to Follow UGC Rules
It’s been proved, that user-generated content is 76% more reliable for customers than any branded advertisement. On the other hand, it’s also a wonderful means of filling a brand’s IG account with beautiful relevant content absolutely for free! But is that absolutely legal? For instance, Max Dubler, a famous photographer, and many other Insta users charge brands for using their photos. Once this photographer noticed a brand having shared his post he sent them a request for his charge, yet got a refusal. After this, Dubler made a blog post about the case and got over two thousand upvotes and five hundred comments. Obviously, this blog post was not in favor of the brand. To avoid a similar PR disaster, as well as be fair to your customers and photographers, it’s necessary to get acquainted with all the reposting rules.
The Reposting Legality
The first rule of reposting a UGC and covering your brand is asking for permission. Most brands, however, simply get confined with giving proper photo credit. This way they also reference the original photographer in their captions. Agree that it’s better than a mere tagging.
As a rule, the vast majority of Instagrammers are happy to have their photos reposted, as this gives them a real chance of increasing their followers. Most of them grant permission to use their posts within 24 hours.
However, despite this, getting a permission is demanded by law.
Asking for Permission
The most legal way of getting a permission from an IG user for reposting his UGC content is sending him a direct message and asking a permission. If agreed, the user is to click the provided link to read and agree your brand’s terms of use for UGC. You can also ask users to answer you with your company’s name hashtag thus verifying they are not against you using their content.
UGC always should be approached to as copyrighted content.
Reposting Properly to Instagram
Searching for Instagram content relevant to your brand may be a laborious process. Hence, you’d better opt for using an appropriate tool rather than doing it manually. For instance, you can make use of the Search & Repost tool. The latter will not only maintain the quality of the photo but also automatically pull in the caption, as well as the username of the original post.
Undoubtedly, leveraging UGC on IG is a magnificent way of curating an attractive feed besides being an effective strategy for marketing your business. However, following UGC rules is mandatory. And don’t forget to give credit to every original poster and ask for permission.
