Author: Sophie Anderson

What You Need to Know About User-Generated Content (UGC)

Posted on May 23, 2023 by - Social Media Marketing, User-Generated Content

User-generated content is quickly becoming a popular marketing tactic that brands throughout all industries are implementing in their marketing strategies. Here’s what you need to know about it if you’re interested in learning more about what it means and how you can utilize UGC to improve your brand’s reach, conversions and sales.

Whether you’re ready to show off your brand’s new product, get the word out about your company’s ESG (environmental, social and governance) investing or increase visibility of your next-level services, user-generated content can be an effective strategy.

But what exactly is UGC? And how can you use it in your business to amplify your success? We’re covering everything you need to know in our UGC guide.

What is User-Generated Content? 

User-generated content, sometimes referred to as customer-generated content, is unique product- or service-focused content created by someone other than the featured brand. These people can be consumers, brand advocates, followers or everyday users.

UGC comes in many forms, like photos, videos, testimonials and reviews, which is generally published on social media. However, UGC can also include consumer-written blogs, live streams, articles and even podcasts published on other channels, such as consumer-owned websites or media platforms.

What are the Benefits of UGC?

When utilized in a meaningful and strategic way, UGC is a smart marketing tool that delivers countless benefits and meaningful ROI. 

More Authentic Than Brand-Created Content

Since UGC is often created by your everyday consumer, it comes off as more authentic than content created by your brand for a specific campaign. Effective UGC humanizes your brand by showing how people use your product or service in real life.

Increased Brand Awareness and Reach

Social media and UGC go together like chips and salsa, peanut butter and jelly or [insert your preferred food combination here!].

When you consistently share content created by consumers, employees, brand advocates, organizations or another creator, you not only capitalize on the original post’s visibility, awareness and reach, but also the positive growth that comes from sharing it on your own brand accounts. 

UGC is Highly Influential 

According to Adweek, 85 percent of people say UGC is more influential than content made by brands directly. Consumers trust other consumers. 

The influential capabilities that UGC marketing provides could be considered akin to the power of word-of-mouth marketing, which is why many brands are choosing to implement it in their marketing strategies.

A great example of a big brand harnessing the power of UGC is Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke campaign. With over 620,000 Instagram posts and thousands of tweets using the hashtag, the campaign garnered a significant amount of reach, engagement and excitement.

Establishes Trust and Authenticity 

Considering your brand isn’t creating the content, UGC is generally based on the experience consumers have had, or are having, with your products and services.

Using UGC in your marketing strategy can be a powerful way to build trust and authenticity, as the content and brand feedback is coming from genuine and honest users – demonstrating your brand’s commitment to transparency.

Unique and Exclusive Content

As a business owner, you know how hard it is to continuously and regularly create unique content. With UGC, you can effectively minimize the amount of content you have to create in-house, by sharing and amplifying content your users have already created. 

Valuable Data and Feedback

UGC, especially in the case of reviews and testimonials, is a practical (and often overlooked!) way of gathering valuable data and feedback. When you start to implement UGC in the form of direct consumer feedback, you may begin to attract new users to your brand.

Showcasing your customer’s thoughts and feedback delivers increased brand visibility, and encourages the rest of your community to interact with your brand.

In turn, you have a process that can provide you with impactful data to inform your future business decisions, such as product development. 

How to Maximize UGC in Your Marketing Strategy 

With the impressive benefits mentioned above, you may be wondering how to implement UGC into your marketing strategy. Here are some ways to maximize user-generated content to amplify your reach, awareness, lead generation and sales.

Encourage People to Share 

Implement strategies that encourage your customers, clients, brand advocates and employees to share their experience with your brand, such as a unique branded hashtag, trend, challenge or contest.

Some brand loyalists have even created communities (often online) where like minded people can come to ask questions, exchange tips or share their experiences with (or passion for!) products or services.

Publish UGC on Social Media

Whether it’s in the form of a review, testimonial, photo, video, social post, podcast, blog post, case study or something else, share it on your social media accounts to increase exposure for your brand.

For example, here’s a social media post from Schroeder & Mandel. It highlights a testimonial received from a worker’s compensation client, further positioning the firm as a reputable, trusted and dependable brand who can help in this particularly challenging practice area. 

Share UGC in Other Marketing Forms 

In addition to social media, which is the most common place to publish user-generated content, you can also share positive UGC on your website and in email campaigns to bring further awareness to how your brand is impacting your customers and community.

One way to do so is by creating an engaging testimonials or reviews page on your website that shares all of your favorite customer or client feedback.

Or include UGC in an upcoming email marketing campaign by using part of a witty or funny customer testimonial as a subject line to increase your open rate and engagement, as LoveRaw did in a recent email blast.

Use User-Generated Content as Ad Material 

Did you know that roughly 92% of customers trust the reviews and recommendations shared by people more than advertisements?

On its own, UGC that’s used organically can shift how prospective customers and clients view your brand, but when amplified with ad dollars, UGC used in advertising can be a seriously powerful way to maximize your impact, increase your conversion rates and improve the potential for sales. 

Harness the Power of UGC with Giant Voices 

At Giant Voices, we have the experience and knowledge to amplify your business with powerful user-generated content. Get in touch with our skilled team and let’s work together to take your marketing to the next level.

Celebrating Giant Culture (And How to Build Your Own)

Posted on January 31, 2022 by - Business Tips, Company Culture

Earlier this month, we wrote about how your new employees hold the key to understanding your company culture.

In a nutshell, because your recent hires lack institutional context, they’ll notice things that your more senior employees take for granted.

They also have ready access to comparison (in the form of their previous positions), and they may be able to provide valuable insights into both your organization’s strengths and areas for improvement.

Giant Reflections

As a relatively new Giant, I find that I am uniquely positioned to observe our company culture now.

Here are a few of the things I’ve noticed about Giant culture, as well as some culture-building lessons that you can apply in your workplace.

The Observation: Culture comes up a LOT.

In my very first meeting at Giant Voices, our leadership team brought up the importance of building and maintaining a strong company culture. The subject has continued to come up regularly since.

The Lesson: Facilitate discussion around the things that matter.

Giant leadership understands that culture is important. Rather than taking a “set-and-forget” approach, they know that companies with strong cultures monitor and develop them on a consistent basis. 

The Observation: Employees are held to high expectations—and trusted to meet them.

One of my very favorite management insights comes from Creativity Inc., a book about leading creative teams written by the Creative Director of Pixar, Ed Catmull.

Catmull writes that he presumes that his employees are talented and want to contribute meaningfully in the workplace, and that the job of management is to identify and eliminate any obstacles to their success.

At Giant Voices, team members enjoy a high degree of autonomy. Some people work in-office, some from home, and some mix it up from day to day. The shared assumption making all of this possible is that our team members are ambitious, creative, and committed to doing their best.

The Lesson: Trust motivates and empowers.

What I love about this approach is how much trust it demonstrates.

I believe that over time, people will adjust their behaviors to match the style in which they are managed. We all remember those early pandemic horror stories, for example, about employees who were forced to work camera-on so that their supervisors could keep an eye on them. No thanks!

Regardless of intent, this type of management sends a clear message that employees are not trusted. People who don’t feel trusted feel disempowered, and disempowered employees disengage—making them the exact type of employee you shouldn’t trust. It’s a vicious cycle.

Thankfully, the opposite is also true: showing your employees that you trust them is a great way to make them feel engaged, empowered, and motivated—especially when it’s coupled with a company-wide commitment to doing excellent work.

The Observation: We celebrate together.

Next week, I’ll attend my third Giant Voices social event in two months. I’m excited! This team genuinely has fun together.

The Lesson: Keep fun inclusive.

Of course, not all company gatherings are an automatic success. I’ve noticed two things that ensure that ours are enjoyable. The first is that they are always optional. It’s hard to get buy-in for mandatory fun, and allowing employees to choose not to attend prevents a celebration from feeling like a chore.

The second is that company celebrations typically take place at least partly within normal working hours. When gatherings occur only after work, they run the risk of dividing your team instead of uniting it.

For example, if your company only holds evening events, you may accidentally create a divide between employees with childcare obligations and those without—or between those who can afford to pay a little extra for a sitter and those on a tighter budget.

Keeping at least a portion of company celebrations during the workweek makes sure that these gatherings are accessible to your entire team.

The Observation: We get amped about the work.

The Giant Voices team has one all-team each week that we use exclusively to shout out strong work and share exciting projects.

It’s a considerable investment of person-hours in connection and another example that leadership understands the importance of culture.

It’s also fun and inspiring to see the creative work that my colleagues are up to.

The Lesson: Invest time in connection.

Whether your team is in-office or remote, it’s important to devote some time and space to connection, alignment, and learning from each other. Even thirty minutes a week can provide a sense of predictability and rhythm for you and your employees.

The Observation: We have boomerang Giants.

This one isn’t as scary as it sounds.

As Giant Voices approaches its tenth anniversary, a number of people who worked at Giant Voices early in their careers are now returning in more senior roles, bringing with them broader industry experience and historical knowledge of the Giant Voices clients and team.

The Lesson: Strong cultures pay off.

Of all of the things I’ve noticed that speak to the strong culture at Giant Voices, this might be the most unique.

Think about this: of all the jobs you’ve held in your life, which would you want to return to?

It’s not necessarily the job with the coolest office or the sexiest title, but it’s almost certainly a position where you genuinely trusted and enjoyed your team and felt supported in doing your best work. In other words, it was probably a place with a strong, healthy culture.

What’s Next

We’ve been getting a lot of questions from our clients lately about how to build and maintain a strong workplace culture, and we’re not surprised. Remote work has required employers to rethink their approaches to culture, and recruiting and retention are also top of mind for many.

Expect to hear more from us in 2022 about team dynamics, leadership, and how investing in a strong company culture is a critical business practice.

Questions? Just reach out. We’re here to help.

Why You Should Invest in Content Marketing

Posted on September 24, 2021 by - Content Strategy

As our team continues to reflect on recent marketing trends to strengthen future models, there’s no doubt content marketing will continue to accelerate our clients’ growth while strengthening their positions in the marketplace. Here’s why you should invest in this ROI-driving strategy.

Especially in recent years, content marketing has proven itself as a valuable asset to a marketer’s arsenal, serving its purpose to increase brand awareness, generate leads and grow sales and nurture engagement at every step of the marketing funnel.

In fact, HubSpot’s 2021 marketing report found that 28% of those who responded to their survey planned a new investment in content marketing for 2021, up 17% from 2020.

Still not sold? Allow us to offer up why we deem it a critical and profitable strategy for your organization.

Content Marketing as an Investment

Providing useful, valuable content is a key part of our strategy and services. Whether we’re crafting an eBook, social media ad, infographic, white paper or even this blog, our creative team’s primary focus is to understand our clients’ target audiences and curate content that speaks to them.

After the turbulence of 2020, we are not surprised that businesses are investing in content marketing more than ever before. 82% report actively using content marketing this year, up from 70% last year.

These numbers echo what our team has always put into practice—content marketing is, and should be, an investment that companies can’t afford to overlook.

Why, you ask?

We’ve engaged with organizations who view content marketing as an ineffective strategy. Sometimes, they simply don’t have the time to invest in creating consistent content, or they’ve been burned in the past by content marketing professionals that didn’t deliver.

Some are impatient and desire immediate, long-term results from a short-term strategy, and lastly (and most commonly) they often don’t know where to start.

That’s where Giant Voices comes in.

We understand crafting high quality content is a critical piece to our clients’ success. For our B2B clients especially, content serves a higher purpose in securing leads who then move down the marketing funnel into the sales funnel, becoming a customer.

Content Marketing Success

Content marketing is not only about having great, informative content. How you promote it or use the content to drive leads is equally important.

One Giant Voices client has a large library of well-written, industry-specific content designed to cultivate interest in using their materials and products. Our team helped this client build a lead nurture strategy for various target audience segments, leveraging specific content and topics as they move through the different stages of the marketing funnel.

Along with a solid strategy, we developed a comprehensive lead scoring system to evaluate prospects, nurture them into marketing qualified leads (MQLs), and ultimately pass them along as warm leads to sales, where they move through actions to become sales qualified leads (SQLs).

Lead scoring allows us to track contacts throughout their journey, and identify which content pieces, or combination thereof, drove them to take action. Content backed by metrics and data tells a larger story of consumer behavior and enables marketers to create stronger and better performing content.

Embrace Content Marketing

Content marketing isn’t slowing down. As we look ahead to the state of marketing and where content fits, we anticipate brands will work harder across all mediums to include fresh, mission-focused content that will not only retain attention, but drive profitable outcomes.

Video content will continue to capture people’s emotions and attention, and social media will continue to be the #1 channel used in marketing (more on social media strategy to come!).

Interested in learning more about elevating your content marketing strategy? Connect with us to start driving Giant results. 

Three Helpful Tips for Starting Out on Social Media

Posted on November 8, 2019 by - Digital Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Starting your business out on social, but not sure where to begin? Check out our top three tips to help market your plan for social media success.

Three Helpful Tips for Starting Out on Social Media

How many times have you checked Facebook today? As you’re reading this, you probably have a few unread messages on LinkedIn… and no doubt one or two notifications on Instagram. Oh, and don’t forget to check out those trending ideas on Pinterest!

Social media has become ingrained into our daily routine—so it comes as no surprise that it’s the perfect platform for businesses to share their missions, connect with customers and provide accessible communication on a digital landscape.

But if you’re just starting out, or if you’ve been neglecting your social media platforms, we’ve got three helpful tips for making social media worth your while.

Engage with the right platforms for your business.

Most social networks have already established niches, with similar types of audiences using the platform for similar purposes. For example:

  • LinkedIn is primarily a B2B platform for professionals.
  • Facebook is primarily a B2C platform that’s established enough to offer a source of social familiarity for a wide range of communities.
  • TikTok is a highly-visual, B2C platform with an audience made up of younger generations, like Gen Z and Millennials.
  • Instagram is a popular B2C platform for a generally younger demographic.
  • Twitter (aka X) is arguably both a B2C and B2B platform used for strong engagement.
  • Pinterest is a strong B2B and B2C visual platform that thrives on generating traffic back to a business’ site.

There’s also Snapchat, YouTube, Tumblr and plenty more—the list goes on as new and emerging platforms are appearing almost daily.

Yet, regardless of how many platforms there are, each has an established position in the social media market. Meaning if your business is focused on B2B, it may be in your best interest to engage on LinkedIn and Twitter to reach your target audience, rather than spending time trying to establish a following on a platform like Instagram.

It’s better to focus your time and energy on fewer platforms than trying to conquer them all—because ultimately, you want to live where your target audience is.

You’ll see the most success on social media when you have a deep understanding of who your target audience is before you jump into a platform.

It takes time and energy when coming to a full understanding of your customers’ insights (we’ll save that for another blog post), but it’s also a critical step in ensuring the success and value of your business on social.

Create GIANT content that connects.

High-quality content makes connections. While it may seem simple, it can be tricky to put into practice.

Every post you share on social matters, as each platform leverages an algorithm that is designed to look at the percentage of people who are engaging with your content. The more people who share, like, comment and engage with your post, the more it will appear across your target audiences’ feed.

It’s no secret that the social media landscape is a crowded one, but that doesn’t mean that the more you post content the better your business will perform. The truth is, you must post valuable, relevant and high-quality content to earn valuable connections with your target audience.

Take the time to research and understand what content resonates with your target audience. Think about how your business can improve their and focus on establishing relationships with individuals who matter.

Always value quality over quantity.

People often ask, “How can I increase my following?” We counter it with the real question, “Why do you want to increase your following?”

While it’s great to look at your business page and see 4,000 followers, the true measure of success is an active and engaged following that interacts with your posts, purchases your products and uses your services.

A “following” is a vanity metric, meaning it’s a number that doesn’t necessarily correlate to what really matters. Metrics like average engagement rate, overall revenue and profit or your conversion rate hold much more value.

Even if you only have 100 followers, if they are the right followers who support your mission, are great social influencers, and are people you have an established relationship with, then they’re the connections that pay off in the long run.

Elevate Your Social Media Success

If you want to succeed in the social media landscape, start by establishing your goals.

How are you going to utilize the platform to attract, engage, entertain and inform?

Learn what platform(s) offer you the strongest opportunities to connect with your target audience, and invest your time and energy in creating amazing connections that focus on building relationships that will help you achieve your ambition.

Lastly, whether it’s the content you create or the connections you make, always focus on quality over quantity to help fast-track your business down the road to social media success.

A Simple Guide to Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Posted on November 1, 2019 by - Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

Search Engine Optimization (SEO). What is it and why is it important? At its most basic, SEO is the process of ensuring the content on your website is relevant to the people you want to visit your site.

If we dig a bit deeper, it’s about optimizing all content on a website, evaluating all sources that lead to a website, and ensuring an overall positive website experience. These are known as On-Site SEO, Off-Site SEO, and Technical SEO, respectively.

Optimizing these aspects of your website improves the website’s relevance as evaluated by search engines. Because the goal is for search engines (Google being the most common) to send people to your website, SEO helps ensure the search engine’s algorithms view your website as worthy of traffic.

For the purposes of the examples below let’s assume you are a food blogger.

On-Site SEO

On-Site SEO is the tactic that is familiar to most people. Write content, use some keywords, get traffic. Right? Years ago this would have sufficed. As tech gets more sophisticated and our digital needs evolve, algorithms are constantly changing to dig much deeper.

The words you use are still important but how you use them, how you stack up compared to other websites using the same terms, and how you apply that content to your website has become increasingly important.

Let’s say you, the food blogger, and a competitor both wrote similar articles about the pros and cons of cooking in cast iron. You made sure to use the term “cast iron” in your page title, you’ve used additional relevant context in your header tag, your article is comprehensive but formatted for easy reading (not too long, not too short) and you’ve used rich images that each have clear descriptions.

Your competitor has a catchy but ultimately irrelevant page title, forgot to include a header tag, utilized low-quality images, and their article veered off-topic multiple times.

When a search engine reviews both articles, it will easily be able to put your article into context and understand what to show to a prospective viewer. Your page will show up higher on the search results page when someone searches for cast iron because you optimized your content.

Off-Site SEO

Off-Site SEO is the evaluation of what other websites are sending traffic to your website—these are called backlinks and they have become increasingly important as it has become easier to buy links and traffic.

For example, let’s say the magazine Bon Appétit loves your mashed potatoes recipe and publishes a link to your blog in a “Thanksgiving Favorites” online article. That website is highly relevant, produces a lot of original content and has a high SEO ranking. That traffic will increase the amount of confidence that a search engine has in your website.

On the other hand, have you ever clicked on a recipe link on Facebook only to be brought to a website where you need to click on yet another link to get to the actual recipe? These are considered link farms and are not highly regarded—they fall more into the spam (no food pun intended) realm.

Having too much traffic coming from spammy sources can lower your authority in the eyes of a search engine. There are a variety of off-site tactics that SEO experts use, both to increase links from reputable sources as well as disavow links from sketchy sources.

Technical SEO

Technical SEO is all about ensuring a website is usable. In this fast-paced world, your website needs to load quickly, provide a good user experience on a cell phone, be secure, and be seen by search engines.

These are just a few of the many aspects of technical SEO. This is the tedious work that gets overlooked too often.

How much authority would you have as a food blogger if you published a recipe for chocolate chip cookies and didn’t include chocolate chips? How successful would your website be if you didn’t categorize the recipes by type or include a table of contents menu?

That’s how search engines evaluate a website. Your website needs code that tells search engines that your website is open for business. When search engines crawl your website, they need to be able to see that your website is user-friendly, organized coherently and has active pages associated that don’t contain error messages.

Building a Strong SEO Strategy

SEO efforts are an integral part of any comprehensive marketing strategy but can often get overlooked and underestimated because SEO does not require any actual paid media. It’s also a long play and a constantly moving target.

In a world where digital marketing strategies can produce instant results, it can be difficult to wait months to see the results of optimization only to have Google make a big algorithm shift. Those algorithm shifts, however frustrating, are why employing an agency with SEO expertise should always be part of any marketing strategy.

If you are ready to implement a strong SEO strategy, get in touch with our team.