User-generated content (UGC) is important for your brand, as it boosts your online reputation, builds a community around your brand, and positively influences people in choosing to buy your product.
You should always track and analyze mentions, channels and sentiment to benefit from it by integrating it into your content strategy.
However, finding UGC and assessing its positive/negative sentiment is quite challenging considering the amount of data out there.
Using Brand Monitoring you can find user-generated content on the web and identify its sentiment in a click.
How can this be done?
- First, go to Brand Monitoring and type in your brand keywords.
- Select up to 10 countries you would like to track your mentions in. You can filter for a specific language anytime after the mentions are collected.
- To find UGC on the web in general, go to the ‘Mentions’ tab, select 'Web', and filter your mentions by positive/negative sentiment. Assess the domain authority score, estimated reach and traffic. Prioritize (add to favorites) mentions from high-traffic and authoritative websites.
- To find UGC on forums, select ‘Forums’, and filter your mentions by positive/negative sentiment. Check the comments number (thread) to quickly assess if this content is popular and prioritize the mention.
- To find UGC on Instagram, select 'Instagram', and filter your mentions by positive/negative sentiment. Go to the author’s profile to check the number of followers to prioritize the mention.
- When you’ve prioritized mentions, click on ‘Advanced filters’ and select ‘Favorite mentions’.
- Click on the ‘Export all’ button to get a CSV file with mentions you want to work further.
How to work with positive UGC
- Republish positive UGC, but be sure to ask user permission first and thank the author for creating this content publically:
- Share UGC content on social media
- Feature their content on your blog
- Include their content in email newsletters
- Respond to comments on your posts
- Reward quality content, give a public shoutout to your most loyal clients who create the best posts. Create recurring recognitions like "Comment of the Day".
- Promote use cases and user reviews on your landing pages and forums.
- Pay special attention to blog posts or podcasts created by experts. Reach out to them to bring more visibility to your brand and to develop new partnership opportunities. If you receive comments from influencers, you can also publish these on your website, taking the best quotes and placing them on your landing pages.
- Select the best mentions of your product and use UGC in presentations for your clients.
- Showcase your brand community, create a Pinterest board with folders (or Instagram) for different product types. Name the folder “Our Users” and upload pictures of your clients using your product.
How to work with negative UGC
Never delete negative mentions! 52% of online buyers say that a few negative reviews of a product actually makes them trust it more.
Instead of deleting a mention, make sure you don’t leave any negative content without an answer or comment of your own. If a user suffers from a problem, strive to solve their problem or communicate when the problem will be solved. If that’s not possible, find a way to satisfy a user until a more definite solution is available.
How to trigger user-generated content in the future
Find out the channel where your audience is most active and well-represented. Think of what content type your business needs right now. Then, choose from these following strategies:
- Create a contest by asking users to submit photos, comments or videos, and then feature the best ones.
- Encourage people to publish their content right on your website, thus building a community.
- Organize private functions and meetups.
- Run contests and quizzes on social media.
- Create new hashtags.
- Ask questions (e.g. Twitter chat).