Table of Contents
It seems to be more than clear to everyone how much of an impact the Internet has today, in general. Of course, there is also a big impact on business, and there are many advantages that it brings to any type of business. But in order to get all the possible benefits, you are obliged to be active all the time, follow the analytics, create content and analyze the way you treat and communicate with clients; you simply have to follow the flow and be constantly up to date.
It is not enough to just have a good product. Definitely, any product must be accompanied by a story that will attract an audience. So, your content has to have a story in order to sell well.
One of the most efficient and powerful type of content that is considered the most original, the most authentic, and most importantly, the content which customers trust the most is user-generated content. So, keep reading and see why UGC is considered a must these days.
Trends on the Internet are constantly changing, so we come to today’s very popular form of content creation, the so-called user-generated content (UGC), which can be defined as all content on the Internet of any kind that is not created by companies but by their users and customers.
So, as can be concluded, user-generated content has changed the way the Internet is used. Instead of the usual one-way transfer of content by a company to users, users are now the creators, and the content is exchanged between them.
Once a potential buyer sees a product in a realistic release from someone who has already bought it, they will automatically be more likely to buy the same thing than if they saw it from your perspective as a seller because you are the seller and he or she is the buyer.
In addition to this type of content helping potential buyers to more easily decide to buy something, the creation of content by the user greatly helps the seller himself because all that content created by the user is worth its weight in gold. Not only does it save time and save the seller from extra stress, but it is also content that sellers will use on their part, and users have come up with absolutely everything.
When generating content, some strategies important for SEO must be taken into account so that content has relevance and allows it to be better positioned in search engines.
The vast majority of customers start shopping online through search engines. Your ranking will be greatly raised and improved if your users are constantly posting new content about your brand, and search engines prefer fresh and relevant content in search results. And once a visitor comes to your site and shows user-generated content, it also increases the likelihood of a sale.
One of the essential things when it comes to sales, in general, is the trust of customers and the target group, but also the reliability of the products you offer. This is also the case with eCommerce. Nowadays, when the competition in the market is very high, gaining but also keeping and maintaining customer trust has become a great challenge because customers are simply in a big dilemma due to the handful of information placed on the Internet, and they looking for someone to trust.
Every individual would rather trust someone who looks at a product from their point of view, and that is certainly the customers and users. The report presented by Status Labs as a result of research conducted in 2019 shows that the vast majority, more precisely 78% of participants, trust the users’ reviews more than the advertisements and messages they send. This data is more than enough to present the importance of user-generated content in today’s world, which we can freely call the Internet world.
It is very important to build and gain customers’ trust because it is a key thing that influences customers’ purchasing decisions. Another important thing that trust brings with it, which certainly has a positive effect on your business, is that trust implies loyalty and repeat purchases, which ultimately results in customer retention and finally increases sales.
User-generated content plays a big role when it comes to expanding the community of your eCommerce, which can be inferred from the previous part of the text. In addition, allowing your customers to say what they think about you, your store, and the products you offer, and to share that opinion on social media, increases the number of people who will hear or read about you.
So, it is important that in some way you enable your customers to say what they think, that you offer opportunities to share reviews and in some way reward them for the effort and time they have invested in promoting your eCommerce (this can be a gift, discount or something similar).
The more people hear about your eCommerce, the more likely you are to expand your eCommerce community to increase customers and sales numbers.
Authenticity is essential in everything. Being authentic means being special and original. User-generated content is original, realistic, and honest content written by customers or users, and that makes it authentic. It is not content written by the brand/eCommerce, but content based on the experience of previous customers they have had with the products. And we all know, greater authenticity in marketing means more customers and more sales. Keep this in mind when running an eCommerce!
Initially, user-generated content was mostly of textual type, but with the expansion of multimedia content, now user-generated content is increasingly multimedia type of content such as photos, videos, and the like.
If you encourage reviews on your site, with them, you look like a brand that listens to its customers and gives you some confidence that you actually have a good product that you believe in and are not afraid of rating it. If we take into account how important reviews are today for every potential customer when choosing a product and making the decision to buy it, by using customer reviews and ratings, you prove to customers that they can trust your product.
By giving your customers space to express their opinions, you give prospective customers access to learn more about your products from the people who bought them, and your profit from all of the above may be the fact that through customer reviews and ratings, you can get direct tips and comments to improve your eCommerce.
The influence of social networks and the amount of information circulating through them is quite clear to everyone. Content generated by users on social media is a good old way of collecting content that you can integrate directly into your website and use as social proof of the quality of your product or your brand.
Since the content generated by users is shared by millions of people, there is an abundance of content that brands can take advantage of. If we imagine just how many photos and videos are posted daily on social networks, we will realize the benefits of encouraging user-generated content on social media.
Simply, for example, by having your own hashtag, and once you get users to start posting on your hashtag, you have automatically created a one-way map for all the authentic content created by customers who own your products. You can collect this content and use it on your eCommerce site.
People like to be involved because they feel important, so it is very important to listen to what they have to say and encourage them to comment and respond to them regularly. Also, ask questions that lead them to participate in branding and watch how the content is created.
Contests and giveaways are definitely some of the best ways to reach your target audience today. Through contests and gifts, you can build a connection between your brand and the audience, draw attention to one of your products, talk about a new product, show current discounts or rebates, or simply make a promotion, among other things.
Regular organization of the competition causes the users to feel excited and want to win, and the further they increase the user’s activity and thus, the more content is created. This way of encouraging users to take action will not only help you create user-generated content but will also help you develop customer relationships in the long run and, as a result, increase sales of your eCommerce.
It has been proven that user-generated content far surpasses the content created by the brand itself, so attracting customers to both generate your content and sell it for you is definitely a fantastic marketing strategy. Although user-generated content is not a new trend, due to the extraordinary circumstances in which the whole world finds itself, user-generated content has experienced a big boom as more and more companies are now adapting to the digital environment and offering their customers to create content they want to see.
So, in order for sales to reach their peak, as already mentioned, constant progress, following trends, and keeping up with the same is the main key.
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