With the runaway success of Instagram it has become very clear to all concerned, especially businesses who are trying to build their brands online that content continues to be king. The vital difference with using Instagram is that the content for this particular social media platform is photos that evidently speak much more and much louder than simple text. Arguably, Instagram has leaped to the top of the heap as far as its efficacy as an online brand building tool is concerned. A quick analysis of the brands that have successfully employed Instagram to showcase their products or services and to build a robust customer connect will reveal that while the content shared by them is of top quality, they have also considerably leveraged content generated by their followers.
Building Instagram as a Viable Channel for Marketing
A lot has already been written in the online media regarding the importance and best methods of building a presence on Instagram and how to quickly acquire lots of followers. It is crucial for brands to increase the level of engagement and Instagram represents a smarter way of doing this compared with other social media platforms. Thus any brand looking to create an impact with online audiences needs to climb aboard the Instagram band wagon as fast as possible. Where Instagram scores is that instead of text, businesses can build their brands and emotional connect with their followers with highly engaging photographs of the businesses and brands in action.
Leveraging User Generated Content for Marketing
As every smart marketer knows communication should never be one-way. Most brands make the mistake of flooding their Instagram accounts with lots of photographs trying to project their brands in the best-possible way. The mistake that many businesses make is to ignore the opportunity of using content that is generated by the users to create a more credible wave of information about the brand. When businesses employ user generated content not only do they leverage the brand building power of user opinion but also serve to create a matchless level of user engagement that locks in the user like pretty much nothing else. The promotional value of photos as well as videos shared by loyal fans of your brand can create an impact that is far more than that of company generated promotional posts.
Benefits of Leveraging Content Generated By Users
The first and foremost benefit of accessing user generated content to assist your efforts in visual marketing is that it lessens the dependency on your own content. Creating own content is not only difficult but can be extremely time consuming too. It is not enough to allocate the task of creating content for you to others but your fans can do a superb job in sharing content that shows their level of engagement with your brands. This comes across as more credible than the usual promotional content shared by the company.Content generated by your users tend to be far more engaging than posts put out by the brands themselves. The other advantage of user generated content is that the users themselves tend to post it on other social media platforms thus supporting your brand and giving it a wider publicity.
When brands go out to actively encourage content generation by users it tends to involve the community far better than any other online exercise. The passion displayed by loyal followers and fans is easily visible to the rest of the audience and gives the brand unsurpassed mileage. The other great significance of employing user generated content is that the brand is able to study better the interests and demographics of its fan base and often the brand is able to analyze the behavior to get an insight into their behavior that will aid its future efforts in marketing.
Author bio: Susan Kennedy is the head of social media marketing of one of the top consumer goods companies in the country. She has made extensive use of instamacro to increase the follower base of the Instagram account of her brand.
