What is user-generated content?

User-generated content describes material that is produced by people rather than a brand. The term describes the articles, reviews, and other written content, videos, audio, and posts people publish that contribute to the brand’s reach and reputation. For example, social media platforms are filled with content created by users as people create posts that reflect their experiences.

Reviews are a great way to build trust between users and customers. Having a quality relationship with your audience is a great way to obtain consumer reviews and continue to build your brand's reputation with the public. This form of content created by your users is vital to the success of your business, especially online. Encourage product reviews and testimonials by happy customers.

Land Positive Consumer Reviews ASAP

Why is user-generated content important?

Positive content from your audience can be incredibly powerful for businesses. According to Nielsen, word-of-mouth marketing is the most trusted form of advertising. Similarly, Reevoo found that 70 percent of people found content produced by their peers to be more valuable than content produced by brands - even professionally written material. Having customers create high-quality content about your organization can have a powerful impact on your brand’s reputation.

Content created by users can also help you build a community and following around your content. This allows you to tap into the psychological principle known as the ‘bandwagon effect’. When people notice their friends and family - people whose opinion they trust - using a particular brand, they feel more inclined to try that brand as well. A strong community also helps to build loyalty, which means that your customers will feel more inclined to stick with your brand rather than finding alternatives.

What are examples of user-generated content?

Content created by users is simply that. This can include written content, images, videos, audio, and more. Communication is the key to convincing people to create content. For example, you can encourage people to post pictures of themselves using your products or post success stories after using your services by offering rewards or prizes.

Encourage conversation on your social media pages by asking questions and then participating in, but not dominating, the resulting dialogue. Offering people opportunities to write guest posts for your blog or website about their experiences can also be a fantastic way to encourage bonding and loyalty. Building a strong social media page can be instrumental in encouraging content.

Content from your audience is a wonderful way to build loyalty with customers and also receive trustworthy, free advertising that can improve your brand reach and reputation. By improving your reputation and awareness, you have the opportunity to become a thought leader in your industry. You can also be seen as an expert. Gaining this type of attention will carry over to guide your brand in the future. Brands should incorporate methods of generating this type of content into their broader marketing schemes to take advantage of the social nature of the modern digital ecosystem.

What is content quality?

Content quality is simply the utility, or lack therof, of your content. When trying to optimize websites for Google, people often vaguely mention that brands should eliminate any poor-quality content. However, it is sometimes unclear exactly what that means. Poor-quality content is generally material that does not serve much purpose for the audience. High-quality content is original, relevant, helpfulcontent.

Poor-quality content is often produced quickly and in bulk in an attempt to improve the rankings of a website, but rarely works. Poor-quality content often meets one or more of the following criteria:

• It is “thin,” which means that it does not provide substantial information for users.
• It focuses more on keywords and trying to fool search engines than providing value for the users.
• It addresses topics that are of interest to the brand and not on topics that prospective customers care about or want to learn.
• The material was largely, or completely, taken or spun from another website and does not offer unique insight.

Why is content quality important?

What are analytics?

Analytics are measurements that allow you to examine how well your pages are attracting visitors, how well you are engaging those visitors, and whether or not your marketing efforts are successfully encouraging people to convert on your website. Analytics make the difference between generating content blindly, based on vague gut feelings, and creating a content strategy that is based on numbers.

Given that 76 percent of B2C brands and 88 percent of B2B brands use content marketing, the competition is high. You need to use Google Analytics to make sure that you are properly engaging your readers and achieving your desired success.

What is Google Analytics and how do you use it?

Every piece of content you create should have a set goal in mind and should align with audiences at specific stages within the sales funnel. For example, content at the top of the sales funnel should drive repeat readers as you establish your brand as a trustworthy resource, whereas content towards the end of the sales funnel will have a primary goal of conversion.

As you create content, you should be regularly monitoring your progress when you use Google Analytics to see if your material is meeting your set goals and how well it is impacting your overall sales process. When you use Google Analytics, you can provide insight on whether your content is underperforming in any of these areas:

• If you are targeting the wrong people, such as if your content is reaching an audience that is unlikely to make a purchase from you.
• If your content is not what the targeted audience wants to explore, which may result in low engagement.
• If your content is engaging and has strong traffic but it is not doing enough to encourage people to move on to the next stage of the funnel (link to FAQ on using content to move through sales funnel).

Monitoring customer behavior related to the goals you have established is the best means of determining the true success of your content efforts. This can offer you data-backed guidance on the adjustments you should make to drive greater future success.

What can you do with Google Analytics?

There are a few chief analytics metrics that will help you gauge the impact of your individual pieces of content as well as your content strategy as a whole and use Google Analytics to the fullest. To begin, look at:

• Your traffic rates
• Your engagement rates, including how long people spend on your pages and how engaged they are with the content - such as whether they share the article on social media or leave a comment
• How many of your readers progress to each stage of the sales funnel and the pages that are driving the most conversions at each stage
• How well your content correlates with brand revenue
• How you are performing in each of these areas month-over-month and year-over-year

Analytics is powerful tool for your content production because it tells you how successful your efforts are and where you need to make adjustments. Rather than wasting your time producing content and creating a strategy based upon hunches, you will be able to create a numbers-driven system that will help you maximize your success.

Where can I promote my content?

Promoting your content is a comprehensive process that spans the multiple platforms where you hope to reach your target audience through paid content marketing. The right distribution plan will increase exposure to your content, increasing traffic and audience engagement rates. This introduces more prospects into your sales funnel and potentially increases your customers.

Selecting the best content promotion platforms will depend on the types of content you are promoting and the audiences you are hoping to target. For example, if you are using social media to promote a piece to the younger, millennial generation then platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook will be more in line with this demographic. On the other hand, if you are trying to reach experienced professionals, you will bring in more interested readers through LinkedIn.

Promote Your Content In One Of These Ways

How do I create a promotional plan?

To develop an effective content promotion plan, you must first identify your audience. You should know exactly who you are targeting and where they will be on their buyer’s journey through journey maps. This information should inform the content you produce as well as help you identify the best channels for your content distribution plan.

To maximize exposure to your audience, your plan should include a variety of platforms. Consider the audiences that you can target through:

•  Major social media platforms (particularly Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Google+)
•  Your email lists
•  Paid advertising 

Once you have identified your audience and the distribution channels, determine a content promotion schedule that will get your message in front of the right people at the right time. Blasting irrelevant or uninteresting content on various platforms will likely lead to audiences tuning you out. Thoughtfully creating and distributing content will help you develop trust and credibility, and cultivate a stronger and more loyal following.

How do I know if my content promotion is working?

As you distribute your content across multiple channels, you should continually monitor the impact, using dashboards such BrightEdge Storybuilder to view and compare metrics. You can understand how your target audience is engaging with the piece, compare the traffic rate with other pieces, and understand what they did after reading it. These insights help you judge the effectiveness of your distribution plan.

If your content promotion distribution plan is not working, you will need to evaluate if this is due to improper targeting, content that is unappealing to your target audience, or a writing style or voice that is just not engaging. You can run an A/B test, making small changes and noting the impact on engagement and conversion rates, in order to gradually build towards creating effective content.

When properly employed, your content promotion and distribution plan will help you bring in interested readers to explore your content, building your brand and increasing your likelihood of conversion. Taking the time to think about where you to distribute your content and then measuring your success will help you maximize your resources and improve your success rates. 

Utilize the BrightEdge platform to track your results and get recommendations in real-time!