Top Social Platforms for User Generated Content

#Usergeneratedcontent #socialmedia #visualmarketing #ugccampaigns #instagram #millennials 

It’s widely said in marketing circles that today's consumers are immune to advertising. What they really mean by this is that they are immune to traditional advertising-- a mass-market branding approach that is a one-way form of communication, where advertisers talk "at" audiences.

With the rise of social channels and an increase in levels of online engagement, consumers are posting more and more photos and videos of the products they love. Marketers have found that collecting and displaying this content is an effective new medium of communicating directly with their consumers. Why? These photos and videos serve as authentic visual reviews of their products.

People trust recommendations from their peers—which they see as more objective than brand generated content. User generated content is becoming more and more mainstream as marketing teams push for greater authenticity, transparency and interactive new media experience. 

Yet the number of social platforms where consumers can share content is continuously growing. This makes it difficult for brands without a visual marketing platform to prioritize where to collect user generated content from. If you’re collecting user generated content manually, here’s where you should start.

1. Instagram

The ultimate visual platform, this is where you are going to see the highest levels of engagement with photos and videos related to your brand. Collecting micro-videos is also readily accessible on this platform. The easiest way to collect user content from Instagram is to do a search of your evergreen hashtag and reach out to users via an Instagram comment on their content for photo permission rights.

2. Twitter

Twitter has an active base of social users—46% log in on a daily basis. The platform itself is very accessible to brands. You can collect by doing a broad hashtag search and/or a brand handle search. The best way to get photo or video permission rights on Twitter is a direct @ ask to the content creator.

3. Facebook

Facebook is by far the most popular social media platform, and boasts over 1.35 billion monthly users. It also has the most evenly distributed demographics of any social media platform. The easiest way to collect on-brand photos from Facebook is to do a broad search for your brand name and then filter by “Photos.” You can reach out to users via a Facebook comment on their content for permission rights.

4. Vine

Video content is becoming more and more mainstream. Increasingly, we see top brands running social  campaigns that encourage consumers to post video content online (see Beats by Dre.) You can also look for brand influencers on Vine. They often post informational videos that might demystify the post-purchase experience of your products. The easiest way to find content is to do a broad search for your brand name and sift through the people and mentions that are most relevant to your brand. You can reach out to users via a Vine comment on their content for video permission rights. 

There are many social media channels that you can gather user generated content from. If you have the resources, you can collect across all social media channels. Make it a priority to identify, reach out, and reward to your star user generated content creators. By adopting these interactive methods to optimize your social media efforts, your brand will be able to tap into the social innovation and power that social media has to offer.

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