Getting in front of your target customers is becoming difficult now more than ever. Each media even social platforms are crowded with brands pushing their content aggressively. If you want to get to your target audience, it can become a very complex, competitive and expensive thing for you.
So, thinking what should you be doing in times like these? Well, the answer is way simpler than you think. You need to gain from customer advocacy. By relying on your customers and their followers, you can achieve your marketing goals more efficiently and effectively.
Moreover, one of the most useful ways to harness customer advocacy is through user-generated content. User-generated content is anything good about your brand that is created by your customers.
Now, most of you may be aware of this term already. However, if you make these 7 changes in your content marketing strategy, you would see a big improvement in your online reputation.
1. Motivate your customers for feedback
It is not a big secret anymore that collecting customer feedback is very important for a brand. But, if you ask for it via social channels like Facebook and Twitter, it can create an opportunity for you to actively engage with more people. This will also boost up your online visibility and will help you stay in the talks. Besides, the information collected through these feedbacks will inspire new ideas for your marketing initiatives.
2. Use customer questions for making blogs
You must have faced it many times while collecting feedback that many customers often have the same queries. Situations like these often pose a great opportunity for you to leverage your content marketing practices. Meaning, if you frequently get asked similar questions, try making blogs in answer to those questions. In this way, you’ll be solving the problem of a larger audience with just a single post. Also, it will ultimately create a good impact on your brand image and will also boost your website’s SEO.
3. Ask customers to send in their photos
For a brand that is existing in 2018, having profiles on top social media sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram is a must. Also, if your brand has more to do with visuals, it’s best to encourage your customers to post their photos while using your product or services. More so, you can ask them to use a specific hashtag with that image or tag your official profile in it. By doing so, you will have a pool of highly marketable content that you can promote to further attract new customers.
4. Hosting Social Media Contests
Just like the above one, this is an advanced technique that many brands use. You can hold different and interactive social media contests to intrigue your customers’ interest. One common way is to use pop quizzes and offering different prizes through a lucky draw. Another most common way is to ask your followers to post a short video/picture that includes your brand in it. After that, whichever gets the highest votes wins the prize. This is a fun way of letting your customers promote your brand and that too at a very less cost.
5. Collect suggestions from your customers
This is a very effective way of indulging your customers into a discussion that will interest a majority of your online audience. You can ask your customers about the best use of your products/services that they made or you can ask general tips about your industry. Furthermore, apart from increasing your online visibility, this will also help you later in forming a blog out of the best ones.
6. Always look out for your brand mentions
Not all of your customers come directly to you for appreciation. Sometimes, there are customers who post good stuff about your brand name online without your knowledge. Smart brands keep an eye out for such mentions, you should do that as well. By doing that, you can have a huge clutter of marketable content that you can further use to promote your brand online. Nevertheless, you should always keep your social media followers engaged with your brand. It will help your brand name stay in the limelight.
7. Motivate your brand evangelists
Brand evangelists, also known as the brand advocates, are those people who are very active on social media and they spread positive word of mouth about your brand online. As a businessperson, you must take care of such followers and keep them motivated. These people are a huge source of content and are probably more efficient than paid advertisements. So, it should be your priority to motivate more people into becoming your brand evangelists. Also, you should not do anything to make your current advocates angry. Just keep on giving your customers a memorable experience that they feel is worth bragging for.
To conclude that all, user-generated content is like the holy grail of content marketing and you should nurture it. People would trust the word from a fellow purchaser more than they would trust you while you boast about your own brand. So, if you want your brand to be accepted more widely, let your customers do the talking for you. Though, just make sure that you give them a good reason to do so.