Content Strategy Tips in UGC Campaigns

Using a successful UGC advertising campaign for your brand can elevate you from your competitors. Not only will it resonate with your audience, it will increase their trust in you if done correctly. UGC campaigns require careful planning. Each piece of content must be curated before it is licensed. Let’s say you’re getting ready to plan your first UGC campaign. You’ve finally gotten the C-levels on board and are ready to start. Now what?

1.     First, research is key. You must find out who your customers are and what makes them tick if you don’t already know this. this way you can tailor your content to what will strike a chord with them. Will they enjoy seeing something that will tug on their heartstrings? What about something funny?

2.     Define your objectives for this ad campaign. Do you and the team understand the brand values, voice, and overall mission? The UGC campaign must stay true to the brand. Ask questions like, “Why does our brand do what they do?” “What problems are we trying to solve for our customers?”  “Why are we better than our competitors?” “How will this campaign help us overall?” Aside from this define whether this campaign will:

a.     Increase brand awareness

b.     Promote a new product

3.      Identify where your ad will run. This one is important as the length of the campaign will affect how many pieces of UGC content you will need. Multichannel campaigns tend to perform the best since they reach a wider audience. Safe practice is to create a longer campaign that can be cut into shorter ones.

4.     Create a good brief for your UGC sourcing agency. It’s important to define your creative, allow for expansion and pivots, and keep it brief. No pun intended here. This is where you want to define your content requirements. Think about things that did well in past campaigns.

5.     Lastly, measure the performance. Once your UGC campaign goes live, track how it’s doing. This can help you to create an even better ad next time around. UGC is beautiful because it never runs out, it never gets old, and it always resonates with the audience. However, the type of UGC videos you want to curate, source, and license can always be improved based on performance.

It’s no secret that having a good content strategy is important. But, having a good UGC strategy is also very important when moving forward with it as part of your overall advertising strategy. It’s one of the most powerful advertising tools a brand can utilize and for half the cost of traditional. Making it seamless from start to finish will ensure the efficiency of your efforts.

Using Good Storytelling in Content Creation

The art of storytelling goes back far back into human history with petroglyphs almost 12 thousand years ago. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been telling stories for that long. Humans are drawn to a good story. We continue to be fascinated by books, movies, shows, and even chatting in our living rooms to catch up with friends. Compelling content is based on great storytelling. As content creators, you want to hook your audience in and make them want to hear what comes next. This can even be true in short-form video content. This can’t be truer in today’s digital age when people can just swipe through your video because they’re already bored in the first few seconds of seeing it. Though be it short, you still want to follow traditional storytelling techniques. Understanding the elements that make a good story is crucial to your content’s success and performance.

1.     Understand your audience: who is watching your videos? What do they care about? If you’re a fitness content creator, they probably won’t want to watch something on cooking. it should also reinforce your brand voice.

2.     A compelling narrative: start with a clear, concise theme that has a clear beginning, middle, and end with smooth transitions.

3.     Relatable characters: the character should be well-developed. Let’s say that you’re a comedian. You want to create a specific character with a distinct personality. How does this character relate to your audience? What do they have in common?

4.     Emotional appeal: you want to be authentic and appeal to some type of emotion. Is it humor? Is it happy? Is it angry? This will be where knowing your audience comes into play. What types of challenges do they face? What motivates them? What is it that they care about? What are their values and beliefs?

5.     Use the 5 senses: this can create a life-like description that the audience can feel like they are there with you.

6.     Story arc: this is the structure that moves your audience through events. It typically builds to the point. Lead them there with a good hook, some tension, and finally to the conclusion. Make them want to see what that is.

Storytelling in content creation is a powerful way to encourage your audience to stay engaged and possibly even act. Here’s an experiment, do two different video content clips. One of those videos doesn’t follow these guidelines and you just kind of post something with no specific structure. Now, do a similar post that follows good storytelling guidelines for the video and post. Compare the performance insights to see which one did better. We’re certain that you will find it in the second video. Stand out in a sea of creators. Create engaging content that people won’t be able to ignore.

Difference Between UGC & CGC

There’s a new term out there and it’s called CGC. If you have been with us for a while, you know what UGC is. If not, it can be defined as any piece of organic content created by a user. Hence, the name is user-generated content. So then, what is CGC? It is similar to UGC except that the people creating the content are professionals and it is typically co-produced with the brand. Let’s be clear here. These are not influencers. These are creators and they add value to a brand’s particular niche. Usually, they hire the creators to create content for them but the creators themselves do not post that content on their pages. This allows for more control from the brand. The goal here is not reach and it is very cost-efficient for the brand. For example, our social media manager is a creator in her particular niche of Muay Thai kickboxing. An app brand reached out to her to create Muay Thai content for them every week for a predetermined fee. They send her a new brief each week with a due date. She follows the guidelines for creating the videos and invoices them at the end of each month. When they share the content, she has created for them, they add a collaborator tag that she can either accept or decline on social media. There will also never be a lack of content creators in today’s digital world. Being that we’re a content advertising agency we’ve worked on both styles of campaigns. Our UGC campaigns are usually organic, unproduced content from creators that may or may not have large followings. In other campaigns, we have enlisted content creators to create certain content for the brand from their specific briefs. This is a great example of creator-generated content. Do you want to learn how UGC and CGC can increase our brand’s social proof? Contact us today to find out how.