You don’t need to be an experienced marketer to know that people no longer trust advertising the way they trust product reviews. The practice shows that user-generated content (UGC) — reviews, testimonials, blogs, social media posts, forums, and others — is more trustworthy than any form of advertising.

In this article, we’ll talk about how to use clients’ content and motivate them to make it.

What is user-generated content on Instagram?

UGC is content created by clients and for clients. This is a sort of online word of mouth, and word of mouth has always been an actionable way of selling.

Why utilize user-generated content on Instagram?

So, you know what UGC is, but you’re still not sure why you should implement it into your marketing strategy? Well, here are the pros:

  • You get lots of content. With user-generated content, you don’t need to come up with new posts or Stories when you’re run out of ideas. Your clients will do it for you.
  • You increase the trust of potential customers. After having seen positive reviews of your products, your potential clients will no longer hesitate to buy them.
  • You get to know your followers and clients better.
  • You increase social media reach and brand awareness.

How to get user-generated content on Instagram?

  1. The first thing you need to do is to monitor your social media mentions. You can do that with the Tagged tab on your Instagram page or branded hashtags created specifically for this purpose.
Qatar Airways motivate their clients to use a branded hashtag #QatarAirways to tag their journey with the company’s services.

With Combin Growth, you can filter out the hashtag search results by place, time of posts, likes and comments count, gender, language, and count of followers/followings of an Instagrammer. So if you want your UGC to be new, you can set the required filter.

Sort the results you want to get with Combin Growth.

Another way of monitoring your brand mentions is to pay attention to comments under your posts and use these comments as reviews. Moreover, Instagram now notifies if someone tags your brand location in their posts.

2. Repost the content made by your clients. But you should do it after you ask for permission. Maybe, it’s not necessary but preferable. After you get the content owner’s permission to use the post on your Instagram page, repost it with Combin Scheduler and tag the owner.

Repost publications in Combin Scheduler with ease.

To do so, copy the link of a post you want to share with your followers, and the captions along with hashtags will be uploaded automatically with Combin Scheduler. You can easily delete or edit them, though.

The app allows you to move the repost badge to any corners of the image or hide it completely, even. Though we recommend keep the badge and tag the original user.

You can also add a link in bio and location.

3. Post user-generated content such as positive reviews or comments as quotes in your posts, Stories and even store them in Highlights as social proof. If that’s possible, you should also include posts of customers showing your product in action or interacting with it (wearing your clothes, putting the makeup on, using your software, and alike).

How to motivate followers to make user-generated content on Instagram?

Many brands do almost nothing to motivate their customers to generate content. Everything they do is post a branded hashtag in bio and add a CTA like “tag us” or “mention us”. And it works, especially if the brand is large. Often, clients of cosmetics and fashion brands share their posts mentioning the brand.

Wayfair also uses a branded hashtag to stimulate customers to feature its products and later implements the content into the Instagram content plan.

But how to make clients generate content if you don’t sell physical products or you’re not a big international brand? Bonuses.

You need to incite your customers’ interest to make posts with your products and tag you. You can offer them special promo codes, exclusive discounts, or give away something valuable for them. Repost of their content may also be encouraging. Besides, come up with challenges or flashmobs where your followers need to post UGC and get a prize for it.

Don’t forget to thank your customers for the content they generate and mentions of your brand they make.

Share with us in comments if you use UGC in your Instagram marketing and how you stimulate your followers to generate it.

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