User-Generated Content: the marketing goldmine that’s going to make your job easier.
User-generated content combines your eCommerce website with your customer’s social media pages. By integrating your site to pull images from social media, users can get featured on your website, getting their instafamous glory, while you get totally free authentic marketing content. It’s really a win-win.
Here are three ways that you can incorporate user-generated content into your eCommerce site
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Homepage Interactions
Adding your users to your homepage lets them tell their stories about how great your products are, putting their ratings and reviews right there for everyone to see. Customers get bragging rights about being featured on your website, and new customers are able to see how your products will interact with their day-to-day lives.
One great example is Airbnb.com. Because everyone is beautiful in their vacation photos, Airbnb actually takes their customers’ photos and testimonies and places them directly on their homepage for all to see.
Shoppable Galleries
Shoppable galleries embrace customers who are already tagging brands in their social media photos by making all of those photos feed into a gallery on your website. When potential customers go to the gallery, they can hover over the images to view and purchase the products.
Shoppable galleries will also allow potential customers to see how the product will act in their lives, and encourage brand recognition on social media.
Old Navy’s homepage invites customers to post about them on Instagram. The user-generated content gallery shows real people enjoying Old Navy clothing in their everyday lives, which can make a brand seem more relevant to shoppers.
Contests
Everyone loves a good competition, especially if it brings publicity to your brand. Invite your users to participate in your brand by offering prizes, discounts, or features if they post the best pictures of themselves with your product.
Starbucks did this in 2014 with their #whitecup campaign, calling for users to draw art on their white cups and post them on Instagram. The winner would get their art printed on actual cups in actual stores. The contest blew up and tons of artsy Starbucks cups showed up all over Instagram. Starbucks got awesome content to put on their website, and Starbucks customers bought extra coffee just to draw art on the cups.
Our thoughts…
User-generated content is the next big thing. Let your customers write your story for you. After all, they’re the ones out in the world using your products and are probably taking beautiful social media photos anyway. Embrace the world of social media and leverage it into awesome, totally free marketing content.
PeakActivity is a leading expert on eCommerce sites and social commerce, including user-generated content. Leveraging user-generated content to enhance your eCommerce site while connecting to your end user is easy if you have the right people to help you out. Visit our website to find out more and set up a 15-minute call to talk to our team.