User generated content (UGC) is essential to your e-commerce brand’s social media strategy. According to a study by Statista, 79% of consumers report that UGC heavily impacts their decisions on purchases. Plan to incorporate these 2023 UGC strategies to grow your e-commerce business.

What is UGC?

UGC is content your customers have posted on their own social media accounts that mention or show them using your products. 

This content can do a lot for your business organically, but you can also use this content on your social accounts with permission. UGC will bring more authenticity to your brand than what you can create yourself, so it is a very important asset.

Types of UGC

There are many types of UGC that you can utilize. Overall, these three are the most common.

Social media

Social media is where most people think of finding UGC. It can be in the form of images, videos, comments, etc. Social media is the perfect place to interact with customers who post UGC organically, so you should try to make connections and build your brand’s personality.

Blogs

There are millions of blogs online and many of them post product reviews for their readers. Be on the lookout for any blogs that are mentioning your business or products so you can interact with the content. A great way to find these is to search for your products on Pinterest.

Reviews

Consumers often check review sites like Google, Trust Pilot, Yelp, etc. The reviews written about your brand on these sites can also be considered user-generated content. It is important for you to interact with both positive and negative reviews so that consumers can feel at ease and trust your e-commerce business.

Benefits of UGC

Statistics show that UGC is very important for any brand in the online space. For example, UGC videos are 22% more effective on TikTok than brand videos. But, are you asking yourself what exactly you can get out of it? Here are 5 benefits of UGC for your e-commerce business.

Brand recognition

Brand recognition is crucial because it helps consumers make purchases. When a customer is planning a purchase and sees your brand, they’ll already be familiar with your business. UGC gets your brand on the radar of new audiences that you don’t already reach.

Feedback

Not all UGC is going to be positive. It’s inevitable to receive a negative review at some point in your business. But, you can derive feedback from these experiences and learn about areas in which to improve.

Engagement

Engagement is very important on social media because accounts with lots of engagement will have their content pushed out to more users. Being tagged in UGC posts and comments will help drive up engagement for your brand accounts on social media.

Product explanation 

Selling products online can be difficult because you don’t have face-to-face interaction to share with customers. This makes it harder to share what is great about your product. However, UGC gives you the opportunity to have product benefits shown off and shared.

Content bank

It can be hard to make the time to create your own content, so UGC gives you a bank of content to pull from for your social media accounts. If the UGC is organically posted you can ask for permission to use the content, or you can pay a UGC creator to make content for you.

Strategies to source UGC

Paid UGC

Not all UGC has to be organically posted by your customers. You can also pay professionals to create the content for you to use. This is similar to hiring an influencer for a brand partnership but is often less expensive because the content will be posted on the brand’s account only. This can be a great way to get new content when you are running low.

Hashtag campaigns

Many companies use hashtag campaigns to encourage consumers to create content.

This is when you create a campaign and share it with consumers on your own page. This campaign video or content will ask customers to post content on their pages with your products using the brand hashtag. Often, companies will incentivize this by reposting content (with permission) or hosting some sort of giveaway.

Video challenges 

One of the most popular forms of UGC right now is short-form video. This is because other social media platforms are strongly leaning into short-form videos to compete with TikTok. With their algorithms prioritizing these videos, it’s what most users see. Brands will create “challenges” that ask users to create videos doing an activity related to their brand or using certain audio in the video. Similar to hashtag campaigns, these videos are often reposted with permission, and often have some sort of giveaway attached.

How to utilize UGC in 2023

As the new year approaches, it is imperative that you include user-generated content in your e-commerce marketing strategy. There is definitely a trend of brands leaning into paid UGC content, so if you have the budget you should test it to see if it resonates with your audience. Chances are, they will enjoy your content and engage more with your brand. 

But, the most important type of content when it comes to helping customers make purchasing decisions is organic UGC. Take the time now to plan out a few campaigns to drive UGC throughout 2023, and you will see amazing results.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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