Content is what drives marketing, but it can be overwhelming to produce all that content yourself.
Not to mention, if your brand’s voice is the only one telling your story, then your brand will seem far less credible than it would if others were contributing their stories as well.
That’s where user-generated content comes in. It’s quite popular in B2C, but a little harder to implement in B2B.
But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t worth trying. That isn’t the case at all. Every brand has space to allow the voice of others to tell their stories. You just need to determine what types of content are the best fit for you and your brand.
Original content is the best content, and original content created by others about your brand will often be more effective than anything you could create.
Two-thirds of consumers say they trust consumer opinions posted online. Not only that, but 61% of B2B marketers give MORE credence to user-generated content.
What are you waiting for? Learn how to coax those you serve in the B2B realm into creating content for you using the following forms of content.
Moderated Social Media Communities
This is one of the most common forms of user-generated content in B2B. That’s because it works. Create a social media community in which your customers can gather and talk about the industries they work in.
You moderate and curate this group adequately and you’ll find a plethora of new content to share on your own social media accounts, as well as valuable discussions that you can chime in on and use to inform your own original content.
This can take the form of a group of Facebook or LinkedIn or can take the shape of a hashtag.
Here at HiP, we host a group called “Demand Generation and Content Marketing Group.” In this group, we create a forum where other content creators can share their content and have conversations about content marketing.
Another wonderful example is Litmus, and their use of the hashtag #emailgeeks, which they use to create a community out of those who do email marketing.
The point is to create a space that both you and your audience can learn from, therefore upping the relationship between your brand and the audience.
Product Forums
One of the best things a brand can do is create a space where customers can talk to each other about your products. This is a space where users can troubleshoot, ask questions, and just generally help each other out.
In this way, users are able to take care of a lot of issues themselves. It’s also a good idea to have a person or people surfing these forums, moderating, and also answering questions that the users cannot resolve on their own.
In this way, you learn more about your customer base and their issues, and in turn they get better support from you.
Reviews and Ratings
Having a space where customers can write reviews and rate their experiences might be one of the most valuable forms of content for a business. After all, these reviews are written by those who have spent money out of their budgets on your offering.
Potential buyers will use these reviews to decide whether or not your product is something they also want to spend money on.
These are just a handful of the types of user-generated content that lend themselves particularly well to B2B.
By asking your customers to create some of your content for you, you not only win the trust of those considering your product, you also further engage your current customer, increase their brand loyalty, and gain access to your own personal focus group. Why not get started?
Have you found other methods to encourage users to produce content about your brand? What were there? Were they successful? Let us know in the comments section.
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