The Power of Authenticity: How to Maximize UGC Videos to Promote Your Brand

UGC impacts on global conversion rates from Statista

Videos are some of social media's most popular user-generated content (UGC). Many consumers rely on these authentic pieces of content before purchasing products or services.

Harnessing the power of authenticity through UGC videos can provide various benefits to your brand. But how do you maximize them to ensure brand promotions that convert?

Understanding UGC videos

UGC videos are diverse and versatile visual content that users share for different purposes—brand recommendations, entertainment, information sharing, reviews, and community building.

Most users create UGC videos through mobile devices and narrate the content themselves. Examples of UGC videos include:

• Short vlogs

• Product or service reviews

• Unboxing

• Step-by-step tutorials

• How-Tos

• Testimonials

• Behind the scenes of your company's daily operations

• Story sharing

• Live streams

• Shopping hauls

• Dance or song challenges and trends

  Anyone can create UGC videos. However, not everyone provides quality content. Here are the individuals who can provide high-quality UGC videos:

• Clients and Customers: Consumers who love sharing their genuine experiences with your products or services. They voluntarily recommend beneficial products or services, express their satisfaction or disappointment, and engage with their followers. They are also the most common sources of UGC videos

• Brand Loyalists: Devoted customers who can be patrons, advocates, subscribers, or super fans with enduring support, enthusiasm, and passion for your brand. They usually have an emotional connection with your products or services

• UGC Creators: Individuals who strategically create their UGC videos. They sometimes work with brands to publish paid ads

• Employees: Current, former, and prospective employees who share UGC videos to feature their working and recruitment experiences in your company

Younger adults' purchasing decisions are influenced by content creator recommendations, according to Pew Research Center

How do UGC videos benefit your business?

Here are the reasons to incorporate UGC videos into your marketing strategies:

Encourages word-of-mouth promotions that strengthen brand advocacy

Word-of-mouth promotion is free advertising that naturally drives consumers to talk about your brand in their daily conversations. This free marketing is among the actions customers take to support your business, strengthening your brand advocacy.

Brand advocacy refers to positive promotions about your business, which help boost your online presence and brand awareness. For example, satisfied customers spread the word about your products through reviews, unboxing videos, tutorials, or testimonials.

Potential customers often turn to UGC videos from brand advocates because they provide relatable and objective endorsements, encouraging them to purchase your products or services.

Expands social media reach

When a UGC video's first few seconds are intriguing and enticing, viewers stop scrolling to watch the whole content. This thump-stopping engagement is called the "stop-scrolling effect."

The stop-scrolling effect helps increase a UGC video's engagement. The higher the engagement, the more users can share the content that talks about your brand, expanding your social media reach.

This increased social media presence can boost your comments, shares, likes, followers, and website traffic. Moreover, these engagements help improve your brand's likelihood of going viral, establishing a competitive edge that provides a high benchmark against competitors.

Delivers authentic and relatable content

Since UGC videos are first-person accounts of consumers, they deliver authentic and relatable content.

When potential customers watch videos of someone like them endorsing your products, they can connect to these pieces of content more. UGC creators also provide relevant solutions to common problems because they understand the consumers' pain points.

Moreover, potential customers prefer honesty and transparency through genuine experiences by seeking videos with sincere and objective opinions. This sincerity is why most UGC videos have conversational tones to make viewers feel valued and included.

Saves time and costs

UGC videos let you leverage your customers' and target audience's creativity, helping save time and costs on producing video campaigns from scratch.

Your team doesn't have to spend time filming and editing raw footage. Instead, they collect, analyze, and organize the best UGC videos to repurpose and repost. At the same time, you won't have to buy expensive filming equipment and editing software.

This cost-effective and time-efficient approach helps reduce your team's workload and improve their focus on significant growth projects and daily tasks.

Provides social proof for trustworthiness and credibility

Social proof is a psychological belief that states others influence our decisions, making us act within social norms or expectations. In marketing, this concept provides evidence of your brand's credibility through reviews of your products or services, guiding consumers' purchasing decisions.

Since potential customers prefer to verify the quality of your products or services through tangible evidence, UGC videos are one way to build your social proof.

The more positive social proof your brand has, the more customers you can gain, helping you create more buzz around your business and grow your customer base.

Offers whitelisting opportunities

Whitelisting is a marketing tactic where content creators let you use their accounts to run advertisements. This exclusive access enables you to optimize sponsored UGC videos published on your influencer or UGC creator accounts.

For instance, before publishing a UGC video, you'll check if the content and caption meet your marketing standards. Similarly, when a post lacks something, you can add call-to-action buttons or edit the copy to make it more compelling.

Furthermore, whitelisting lets you use content creators' data analytics to develop marketing campaigns for "lookalike audiences." These consumers are market segments that share similar interests with the creators' followers, allowing you to target new audiences.

Source: emplifi.io

Tips for maximizing UGC videos

Maximizing UGC videos involves the following best practices:

Set strategic goals to communicate your requirements clearly

Sure, creators and users tag you in polished UGC videos about your products or services, but how do you use these pieces of content to promote your brand efficiently? At the same time, how will you get the best UGC videos if you don't know what fits in your campaigns?

These factors are why you should set strategic goals to communicate your requirements. Examine your current social media strategy and search for areas where UGC videos align with your goals.

Then, develop a statement communicating what kinds of UGC videos you prefer to feature and share them across your sales channels. Examples include:

• Profile bios

• UGC post captions

• Website

• Product packaging

Launch hashtag campaigns or contests

Hashtags help make different social media content more discoverable, boosting their chances of going viral. You should leverage these tags by running hashtag campaigns or contests encouraging your customers, prospects, and target audiences to join and share UGC videos.

Create guidelines and require users to add your branded hashtags in their posts to increase brand awareness. Offer incentives or prizes to motivate them to win.

For example, launch a summer campaign where you encourage users to share videos of their summer experiences using your products or services. To participate, they must use the hashtags #SummerGetawayWithYourBrandName or just #YourBrandName in their posts.

Then, offer exclusive product or service discounts to motivate people to join. Not only does this help increase your online presence, but it also establishes a community around your brand.

Collaborate with influencers and UGC creators

Collaborating with influencers and UGC creators is another way to maximize UGC videos. However, these collaborations require finding relevant content creators and strategic outreach.

Using an influencer platform to find and connect with relevant influencers and UGC creators is ideal. This software solution provides a content creator dashboard that lets you select potential candidates based on your requirements in just a few clicks. Then, prepare for outreach by scaling your list down.

Outreach involves compelling and attention-grabbing requests for collaborations. Your outreach messages must include the following:

• Intriguing subject line and introduction

• Your name, position, company name, and brand identity

• Permission request for partnerships or collaborations

• Reasons why the creators should work with you

• Call-to-action message that compels the creators to respond at the end

Respond to social media comments, tags, and mentions

One way to create UGC videos yourself is by responding to social media comments, tags, and mentions. For example, in TikTok, you can reply to comments with videos. You can also duet and stitch other creators' content.

If TikTok isn't your primary channel, you can screenshot the comments and add them to your response video compellingly. The goal here is to edit your UGC response videos in a way that mimics how daily consumers create their content to ensure authenticity.

But before creating your response videos, monitor your brand mentions, tags, and comments through social listening.

Social listening is an approach that tracks social media conversations about your brand in real time. It also delivers insights into customer experiences, pain points, and expectations.

You can also use social listening to observe competitors, conduct sentiment analysis on niche-relevant topics, and monitor trending UGC videos.

If you encounter negative UGC videos, here's how you should respond:

• Address the concerns politely and professionally

• Thank the customers for reaching out

• Never let emotions overpower you, so you should take time to calm down before responding

• Offer actionable resolutions and ensure you'll work hard to prevent the issues from happening again by improving your products or services

Reach out to customers publishing UGC videos about your brand

Many brand loyalists and satisfied customers love to share their insights and experiences through UGC videos for free. Connect with these individuals and ask explicit permission to repost or repurpose their content.

Here are a few ways to do it:

• Start a conversation by commenting on the creator's posts

• Send a direct message on the social network where you found the content

• Reach out via email for formal agreements and explicit permission, if necessary

  Once you have explicit permission, remember to acknowledge the creators as original posters to motivate them to make more videos about your brand.

Implement robust content moderation strategies

Since users publish UGC videos in real-time without content moderation, they may expose your brand to offensive and hostile content that can damage your reputation.

As such, you must implement robust content moderation strategies to ensure you repost or repurpose UGC videos that positively promote your brand.

For example, use a UGC platform with automated integrations that scan UGC videos. This system typically uses artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms to filter out content that doesn't benefit your brand.

However, using this system to curate negative UGC videos worth responding to is also essential. Responding to negative reviews shows customers and prospects that you value feedback and are dedicated to providing customer-centric services.

Social platforms with the most UGC engagement from HubSpot's study

Best social media platforms to curate and post UGC videos

While leveraging multiple social media platforms helps you reach different market segments and demographics, there are channels where UGC videos perform best.

• TikTok: A video platform that uses algorithms to tailor content according to user preferences and interactions, making UGC videos highly popular

• Instagram: A photo- and video-sharing platform that has UGC-friendly features like Reels, Stories, Highlights, and Collabs

• YouTube: A video platform where users upload videos of any length. It recently launched YouTube Shorts due to the rapid growth of short-form videos. If you want your videos to appear on Google search results, you should include this platform in your marketing channels

Start collecting UGC videos today

UGC videos are compelling content that can increase customer acquisition while saving time and marketing costs. You can collect authentic content that reduces workload, maintains your online presence, and boosts engagement by encouraging consumers to share UGC videos about your brand.