As the saying goes “content is king”, but with the number of digital channels ever increasing, the demand for a constant and growing volume of high quality and engaging content is at an all-time high. This is placing a huge strain on marketers (and their budgets!) who are struggling to keep pace with the demand of content-hungry audiences across digital platforms. One area brands are looking to solve this challenge is through the use of User Generated Content (UGC) which presents some incredible benefits but also some additional challenges.
Gartner recently published their annual marketing predictions report, which sets out the key strategic trends CMO’s are seeing. In the latest report, it’s stated that “By 2024, 30% of large organizations will identify content moderation services for user-generated content as a C-suite priority.”
This highlights how important User Generated Content has become and will continue to be. But why is this?
Why is UGC so valuable to brands?
Producing high quality content at scale is a huge challenge for marketers. But with the global adoption of social media platforms, the ‘always-on-culture’ and improved image quality taken from smartphones, customers, fans and influences all around the world are already creating highly engaging, authentic and visual content about brands and their products and services. In fact this content is found to be more trusted than brand content and provides a very powerful form of social proof.
UGC is not only more trusted than brand created content, but the volume and quality of content makes it incredibly valuable to the modern marketer. It can be found in all formats (images, videos, social media posts, reviews, testimonials) and on almost every digital platform (social media, forums, review sites), with little barriers to entry to allow anyone (and often their dog) to become creators and influencers.
Importantly, consumers actively seek user-generated content (UGC) when making purchase decisions, so choosing to display this on brand channels like your website makes real-life, authentic customer stories much more accessible, without the need for potential customers to go elsewhere to find them.
When sourced and moderated in the right way UGC can extend further than brand websites, and scale across all digital channels, to support things like email marketing, ad-display units, amplifying to brand social channels, and even print. This generates a positive snowball effect of content created about the brand, contributing to organic brand traction on traditional review sites, social media and, in time, search engine result pages.
However, using UGC isn’t without its own obstacles, like actually finding the highest quality assets, ensuring usage rights for compliance, and having a scalable workflow to manage it all. That’s where StoryStream comes in…
How can StoryStream help you scale UGC moderation?
To support the UGC moderation process, StoryStream has developed an enterprise-grade suite of tools that seamlessly filter through the volume of UGC being created every day, manage the usage rights, and deliver digital content at scale to consumers in any stage of the online buying journey.
Find high quality, brand-appropriate content using AI
AI-powered filters ensure your team is only ever shown content that aligns with your brand guidelines. Using AI filters like positive sentiment, image quality and aesthetic score reduces the time spent searching for the right assets to use by filtering out negative reviews, shortlisting preferred creators, and highlighting content most likely to impact conversions.
Automated workflows and Rights Management process
Ensure proper legal practice for UGC acquisition, using StoryStream’s Rights Management workflows, automating the previously manual conversation between the brand and creators.
Browse pre-filtered content and use customisable, multi-language messages to easily share usage requests and terms & conditions directly on networks like Instagram and Twitter. Approval of content is handled automatically, marking content as ready to be published and usable in all agreed marketing channels.
Keep an audit trail and ensure correct usage
StoryStream maintains a high level of compliance for brands, creating an automatic audit trail of exchanges with creators, with the option to add additional records like influencer contracts, or screenshots of approvals from the source network.
You can also set content to automatically expire after a certain period of time, such as after a specific campaign, according to brand terms and conditions, or to coincide with data retention policy.
Publish content to the places customers are most likely to convert
Most importantly, StoryStream supports the widest variety of content sources, with most social networks and all styles of review or blog content. Avoid consumers navigating away from your brand website by curating influential content at key places in the purchasing journey, and create a snowball effect of contributions from creators seeking brand recognition.
To get started with StoryStream, and join brands using industry-leading, best in class workflows to support their content processes required to fulfil the growing content requirements for brand marketing, contact us here.
Mercedes-AMG transforms social media engagement with user-generated content using StoryStream Curate
Mercedes-AMG wanted to find a compliant way to tap into the huge volume of high-quality user-generated content being created around the brand every day, meaning they could publish more content while building engagement by using authentic and trusted crowdsourced stories created by customers and fans.
Mercedes-AMG encouraged owners to post images, videos and stories to @mercedesamg, #AMG and other campaign specific hashtags, which were centralised in StoryStream, surfacing the best UGC to the social team. This made a seamless process of managing rights with a custom, automated outreach message, allowing the creator to give explicit rights for usage.
After scaling Mercedes-AMG’s use of UGC, sourcing over 100 pieces of usable content per week, they see it consistently outperforming traditional posts when shared to their own brand accounts, with an 18% increase in post likes and 55% more comments per post.
To find out how StoryStream can help you collect and moderate UGC at scale, contact us here.
