In this week’s blog, we’ll cover a popular trend in business marketing today: user-generated vs. influencer content.
In today’s age of heightened consumer demand for transparency and authenticity, brands must adapt and seek fresh avenues of communication.
To earn the confidence of consumers, brands leverage the power of content marketing.
By utilizing user-generated vs. influencer content, brands can effectively communicate in an authentic manner and establish trust with their target audience.
But how do these two types of marketing differ from one another?
Influencer Marketing
Influencers are generally paid (or sponsored) by businesses to create content and distribute this content across their social media channels.
Some influencers allow businesses to get the rights to the content and redistribute it across their own marketing channels, while others do not.
In addition to this, because influencers bring with them a large audience that businesses can market to, their rates can be pretty expensive.
User-Generated Content
As for user-generated content, there are two ways to get these – pay select customers to create content for you, or encourage your current customers to showcase your products (or benefits of your service) by launching campaigns that would give them something in return.
The point is that you will have to invest if you want your customers/clients/users to create content for you.
The greatest benefit of having user-generated content on your marketing channels is that because they feature real people (your customers or clients), they give an air of authenticity to your marketing.
Which Is Better? User-Generated vs. Influencer Content
This really depends on what the goal of the campaign is. Here are three scenarios where you can use either content and how you can use them.
1. If your goal is to launch a new product or service, you can give selected customers or clients a massive discount for them to try your product or service; this way they’ll have something to use to create the content for you. The same goes for influencers; send a few samples to them so they can try it for themselves, thus giving them an idea of how great the product or service is, fueling the content they will be posting on social media.
2. If your goal is to grow your brand and expand, then taking advantage of an influencer that has a large audience is the way to go. As for UGCs (user-generated content), having them send you testimonials can effectively establish credibility for your brand.
3. If you want to get more conversions via social media, user-generated content is often the way to go because of how their content affects the buying audience. Authentic content often encourages leads to buy, and so when visitors see real people recommending your products or services, there’s a higher chance that they’ll be interested in buying.
This doesn’t mean that influencers aren’t effective in encouraging leads to purchase; after all, inflencers have established credibility with their audiences.
In Conclusion
Once you’ve decided what type of content you’ll go with in your social media posts (whether user-generated vs. influencer content), you’ll need to strategically organize that content.
This is where HoopJumper can help you.
We help busy professionals manage their social media accounts and execute social advertising campaigns quickly, saving them months of expensive trial and error.
Interested in boosting your social media campaigns today? Contact us to learn more.