What is User-generated Content and How to Make it Work for Your Business

Would you like to get great content created for your online shop for free without having to lift a finger? What about content that increases your revenue and conversion rates? If these sound appealing to you, then user-generated content is exactly what your business needs.

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As an experienced shop operator, you know how important good content is for your shop. From high-quality product images and descriptions to customer ratings and trust elements.

User-generated content can be an important sales driver if it is used correctly. But what does this marketing term actually mean?

User-generated content (UGC) is simply any kind of digital media content that has been produced by the customers of a shop, not the owner.

What types of UGC are there?

Remember that all user-generated content is created by customers and has to do with your online shop or product. The best-known types of UGC are:

• Customer Reviews
• Photos and videos of enthusiastic customers using the product
• Photos and videos of the product alone
• Comments, questions and testimonials
• Creative content made for a competition

There are so many ways you can use user-generated content, whether it is on your product pages, printing giant billboards or simply posting those shared images on your social media. Starbucks, for example, held a #WhiteCupContest to see how creative their customers are.

This allows customers to directly guess what the product looks like in real life and how they can wear/use it.

What are the advantages of UGC?

Collecting this kind of content brings plenty of positive aspects to online shops:

• Authenticity (enthusiastic customers take photos of themselves with the product or write about it)
• Customer retention (customers see that you run a great shop and recognize the quality of your products)
• Brand strength/reach (when customers produce content for you and share it with their friends/followers, your shop gets more visibility)
• Identification (customers feel like they have a connection to your shop)
• Little effort (you basically have to go through the content and choose the best ones to display in your shop or social media accounts)
• Unique content (you have more unique content that sets you apart from your competitors)
• SEO (Put simply, UGC = unique content, which gives you an SEO bonus over your competitors)

If you want to find out how you can use user-generated content to increase your turnover, you should download our free whitepaper on this topic.