According to a recent survey, Millennials spend 30% of their total media time on content created by their peers. Social media is a public forum, where people exchange ideas and opinions on various issues among their social media circles. People want to contribute their own content to the conversation, so why not put that impulse to work for your business?
At first glance, this impressive number can be threatening to content marketers. It’s really hard to establish the same degree of trust between a brand and a customer as that customer may have with their friends or family. The good news is that people trust content created by their their peers 50% more than other media. So when users create content that contains information about a business or a brand, there’s a huge opportunity to gain customers. Just think of the last time you saw someone document their appetizing-looking dinner on Instagram.
Marketers call these kinds of posts user-generated content, which means content created voluntarily by a person unaffiliated with the company in any way, and posted online, whether it’s on their blog or social media profile. User-generated content is not limited by form—it can be a customer review, an Instagram photo, a YouTube video, or even a visualization of a data set. Brands showcase user-generated content by sharing it on their official website or social media channel, highlighting both the user and the use case for their product or service.
