Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing Podcast is brought to you byEsther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowersbusiness owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. Welcomeback to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we'retalking about user generated content. So what is user generated content,Melanie, and do you use it a lot?
Melanie
User generated content is the end user who purchases yourproducts or your services and they generate content, hopefully favourablecontent about how they feel about your product or your service. And when peopledo go to the trouble of creating hopefully favourable content, it's absolutelywell worth resharing it. The downside is that not everybody knows to tag eitherat all or the right page. So you may have some content out there that peoplehaven't tagged you in or tagged the right page in. They may believe they've gotthe right one, but they haven't. So it's definitely worth looking.
Esther
Yeah, definitely. So mostly they are reviews. They are, likeMelissa says, hopefully favourable reviews. They could be videos, they could bein your stories, they could be photos, they could be written reviews that theyleave on your Google business profile or your socials. It could be anythinglike that. But you can also request that your users generate content for you.So say you're going to have one of those dreaded competitions that nobody shouldreally be running on social media, but you want to give your customers backsomething. So say it's going to be a discount code or it's going to be a freegift if they share a video of them using your product or wearing your product,if they talk favourably, it's almost like bribing in a way, now that I'm sayingit. But if they talk favourably about your product or service, you could givethem put all people in the hat and do it that way. My kids go to a footballcamp and the coach usually raffles off or does that with one of the free placesfor his camp and he just gets them to do skills on football. So he'll say, thisweek I need you to do the Crossbar challenge and they all have to try and hitthe Crossbar as many times as they can in a certain amount of time or somethingto show football skills. Not Facebook skills. So he then puts all the peopleinto a list and draws the amount of the hat and they get a free place at hiscamp. So it's not generating content specifically about him, but it is helping thekids learn new tricks regarding football. And at the end of the day, peopleshare it and people see it, and people think that he's a great coach, which heis because of the skills that these kids are learning. Any other examples?
Melanie
Well, yes, I think another valuable tool for user generatedcontent is you understand the language that your audience is using. So, okay,they may take photos and videos of your products or your services or maybe youspeaking at an event or something like that, but you find out what's resonatingwith them because they make a point of actually mentioning it in the post orthe tweet. And that really helps you understand how they think, what they'veinterpreted from that product or that service and the language that they'reusing. So I think it's actually a really vital research tool.
Esther
Absolutely. Some of the best examples. Does anything standout to you, Melanie, of good user generated content or UGC as people shorten it to?
Melanie
Honestly, no. It's such a varied route because it really depends on the platforms you're looking on. It's treated so differently when you are tagged in a story on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, whatever, you get notified. But if you're not mentioned, then you're missing out on a huge a mount of data. Now, we as brand ambassadors of AgoraPulse. They have a tool that helps you understand any mentions. So you can put down the initials of your business or the full name or the part name of your business or your personal name, because they could also be mentioning Esther Ocampo or Melanie Boylan, and those will be found. It's kind of like what is formerly known as Googlealerts, if you like. Now, if you don't want to go down the route of third party planners like that just immediately, then the Google alert is nearly the next best thing. But in fairness, you do tend to get some really random stuff sent to you as well. But for people who are starting out, it might be a good way to find out how often you're getting mentioned and where you're getting mentioned.If it's you, of course.
Esther
Oh, yes, of course. And one thing that sometimes doesn't come up or maybe we don't think about or remember is getting permission from the users who have generated the content to re share that on our own social media.
Melanie
The argument there is, is if they've tagged you yes, if they've tagged you.
Esther
Then that's very in my opinion, that's very easy.
Melanie
Then surely they're open to having it re shared.
Esther
Well, what if they used your like, say you have a hash tag that you use, stompies, for example. In your case, if you use it as a hash tag but somebody is using it as "stom pies", they think it's somethingelse, then you go to share it.
Melanie
Well, its down to the personal interpretation if I see a bunch of rather good looking pies in the picture, then I'm going to go from that. They weren't talking about me. It would only be relevant to share content that's about me and my business. But honestly, I think it's open season. And any body who shares something publicly, as we've discussed in previous podcasts, there are different ways of sharing our content and keeping it to communities, to groups, or even to close friends and family. But if you put it out on the web, you run the risk of it being grabbed, used, utilised and re shared.
Esther
Okay, so then what if it's something that you don't want out there on the Web, that it doesn't go with your brand guidelines, that it doesn't they have tagged you, your brand, your company, but it's either negative or it hasn't been photographed in the best light
Melanie
since when did you start playing devil's advocate. That's my job.
Esther
Since you've been giving all the good information in this podcast. I'm playing bad cop.
Melanie
Okay, well, obviously I wouldn't ignore any bad feedback or any bad content, but I certainly wouldn't re share it. What I would do though, is absolutely publicly, because now we're talking like crisis management here.Publicly, I would address those issues. Okay, really sorry to you had this bad experience or sorry that you were delivered such poor condition products. Let me have a look into your deliveries. Let me sort out a replacement. And then after you've made all those public responses, then suggest taking the conversation through to a direct message or a private message and dealing with the personal data off air if you like.
Esther
Yeah, definitely. Don't leave the elephant in the room.Don't leave it just sitting there. But some of the things that we've mentioned here, some people could get a little confused between user generated content and influencer marketing, but they are different because generally with user generated content, you're not paying for them to talk nicely.
Melanie
Oh, absolutely not. This is just spur of the moment, feel good factor stuff that people are sharing because they're, honestly, pleasantly delighted.
Esther
Yeah, and we love people to be delighted and we love feedback as well. So feel free to go on to our socials and leave us any reviews, pleasant ones, obviously, because we are nice and you're nice and all our listeners are nice, but user generated content isn't probably used enough by some brands. This is why it's important, guys, to go and ask for reviews.Send a little note inside any products that you send saying, share this on social media. Make sure that people know how to tag you and where to tag you.All right, that's our 5¢ for today. That's our information for you, and we hope that you will grow from this and do better. That's it for today, guys. We're back with more Monday morning marketing next week. Until then, bye bye.
