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March 12, 2015 // 8:00 AM

U e Gene ate ContentCampaign That Act allyWo keWritten by Eric Siu | @ericosiu

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MARKETING / 3 days ago10 User Generated ContentCampaigns That ActuallyWorked

MARKETING / 21 hrs agoHow to Use Humor to Sell More[Free Email Templates]

Tired of struggling to crank out the endless streams of content needed toappease today’s consumers? You’re in luck! There is an option for burnedout business owners, and that’s user generated content. This technique, inconjunction with the growth of popular social media websites, allows modernbusinesses to delegate some of these brand-building responsibilities to anunlikely voice -- their customer.

Having users contribute to your content creation efforts has anotherinteresting advantage, as consumers are more interested in hearing theviews of their peers than reading cleverly written sales messages.According to Bazaar Voice, 64% of millennials and 53% of babyboomers want more options to share their opinions about brands,while other studies show consumers trust user generated content more thanall other forms of media.

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In light of these trends, there’s never been a better time to start using usergenerated content to engage your readers and build trust with them. Hereare ten brands that have leveraged user generated content in the past tohelp inspire your own campaigns:

10 Examples of Excellent UserGenerated Campaigns

1) Burberry

Burberry is a British clothing company that was founded in 1856. AngelaAhrendts took over as CEO in 2006 and decided to launch a usergenerated content strategy as part of her goal of changing the company’saging brand. The company launched The Art of the Trench website in 2009,where users could upload and comment on pictures of people wearingBurberry products. Burberry’s ecommerce sales surged 50% year-over-yearfollowing the launch of the site.

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2) Belkin

In 2013, Belkin and Lego collectively developed a line of customizableiPhone cases. The company then created a social platform for customers,giving them a place to share pictures of their cool new cases and to showothers the benefits of making their own.

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3) Starbucks

Another great example of user generated content, Starbucks’ White CupContest launched in April 2014. Customers across the country were askedto doodle on their Starbucks cups and submit pictures as entries. Thewinning entry would be the template for a new limited edition Starbucks cup.

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winning entry would be the template for a new limited edition Starbucks cup.Nearly 4,000 customers submitted entries in a three week span. The contestwas a great way for Starbucks to earn publicity and prove that it stronglyvalued customer feedback.

4) Tourism Queensland

In its quest to find new ways to draw tourists to the Queensland Islands,

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Tourism Queensland launched its “Best Job in the World” promotion in2009, which proved to be a remarkably effective campaign. Over 34,000people from over 200 countries submitted videos to win a six monthcaretaker job that paid $150,000 AUD in one of the most beautiful touristdestinations in the world, while countless others enhanced theirunderstanding of Queensland as a vacation option.

5) Target

In 2010, Target pledged to donate $500 million to education and promised

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to double contributions down the road with a popular college acceptanceletter competition. Throughout the campaign, customers were asked tosubmit videos of themselves opening their college letters. The best videoswere used in a new commercial, which helped Target draw attention to itsphilanthropic campaign.

6) Coca-Cola

To help boost top-of-mind awareness, Coca-Cola created the “Share aCoke” campaign, throughout which the company produced Coke bottleswith customers’ names on the labels and handed them out throughout

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different cities, in order to increase its exposure on Twitter. Customers werethen asked to share the pictures of their personalized coke bottle on Twitterand other social media platforms.

Coca-Cola first launched the campaign in Australia in 2011, but expanded itto the United States, United Kingdom, and other regions across the world.The company attributes the campaign to a 2% increase in U.S. sales afterover a decade of declining revenues.

7) Chobani

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Chobani, a Greek yogurt company that was founded in 2005, is anotherbrand that decided to use its customer base to improve its image and boostsales. The company asked its loyal customers to submit videos and imagespraising its yogurt. The content was shared on the company website,billboards, and across other mediums. Chobani attributes the campaign to a225.9% increase in revenue between 2009 and 2010.

8) Pepsi MAX

Pepsi MAX is another multinational soft drink manufacturer that leverageduser generated content to craft a new brand image. The company created a

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campaign urging customers to share reasons they prefer Pepsi MAX toCoke, asking customers to share pictures on Instagram and other socialnetworks, as well as a mini-site that was specific to the promotion. The bestentries were eligible for numerous prizes, including a year’s supply of freePepsi MAX.

Unsurprisingly, the campaign turned out to be very popular. Over 7,000entries were submitted and the site received over 50,000 unique visits. Thelevel of participation was even more impressive, as the average visitorspent about six minutes on the site, showing that customers were highlyengaged with the brand.

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9) Heineken

Heineken recognized that many of its consumers were looking for a moreoriginal type of draught. Acting on this trend, the beer manufacturer enlistedinput from its customers to redefine the beer it has produced for the past150 years. The Heineken "Reinvent the Draught Beer Experience"challenge, which was rolled out in 2012, gave customers the opportunity toshare videos, images, and ideas to help change the experience. Customerswere very receptive to the challenge and submitted hundreds of ideas,helping Heineken improve its product while generating brand interest at thesame time.

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10) Coffee for Less

Coffee for Less recognized that organic search traffic is highly targeted andlikely to convert. Additionally, the company determined that relying on usergenerated content was one of the best ways to improve its SEO, leading thecompany to provide new features on its website that made it easier forusers to read and share comments.

For its efforts, the company received about 6,000 comments between 2008and 2011. Research from MarketingSherpa concludes that these reviewssuccessfully boosted search engine traffic and conversions by 10% and

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125% respectively.

How to Run Your Own UserGenerated Content CampaignLaunching a user generated content campaign can be one of the mosteffective ways to build your brand, as demonstrated by the companies listed

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above. While each of their campaigns were slightly different, there weresome commonalities between them:

Each brand promoted its campaign over its own website and socialprofiles to gain traction.Each brand offered consumers a prize to encourage participation.Each brand rewarded customers for presenting its products orservices in a positive light.

So how can you take advantage of these powerful benefits by creating yourown user generated content campaign? Consider any of the following tipsas you plan your promotion:

Match your promotion type to your audience.

Several of the different promotions described above involve requests madeto users to submit video clips sharing their experiences with a particularbrand or product. But it’s worth keeping in mind that creating and submittingvideo clips requires a certain level of technical expertise that your averagecustomer may or may not have. If, for example, your brand targets elderlycustomers, this type of user generated campaign may not be the right fit.

Request entries that you can use in yourmarketing campaigns.

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Remember, you aren’t running your user generated content promotion out ofa sense of altruism -- you want to end up with something tangible that can berepackaged and used in your future marketing materials. So as you designyour promotion, consider the types of “entries” that you’ll accept. Pictures,videos, or testimonials are all powerful content types that can be easilyconverted for advertising purposes.

Make the effort required commensurate withthe reward being offered.

If you’re giving away thousands of dollars in value as part of your usergenerated content campaign, you’ll probably want users to demonstrate amore substantial level of buy-in than if you were offering simple coupons ordiscounts. If the prize you’re offering is big, making participants deliversomething of value in return guarantees you’ll wind up with content you canuse in your future marketing campaigns.

Eliminate the red tape.

No matter how much effort you decide to require from your participants,don’t make them jump through unnecessary hoops in order to participate. Ata minimum, your entry instructions should be clear, your submission websiteshould be easy to navigate, and your forms require only the fields needed toprocess an entry and comply with any legal restrictions your giveaway is

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subject to.

Straighten out any legal issues.

Before launching your user generated content campaign, you’d be wise toconsult legal counsel on two important issues: the rights you’ll hold over anycontent submitted to your promotion, and any restrictions that governgiveaways. First, you need to inform participants about what will happen tothe content they create following submission in clear, easy-to-understandlanguage. But also, if your state or municipality (or the mediums throughwhich you run the contest) control how, when, and under what circumstancesgiveaways can occur, you’ll want to be sure your promotion is in compliancebefore running afoul of the law.

Given the breadth of the different industries highlighted above, it’s clear thatany brand can follow a similar model to promote customer engagement andgenerate favorable publicity.

Have you ever run a user generated content campaign before? Feel freeto share your insights in the comments below!

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Topics: Content Creation

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You've Ever Seen (And Why They're Great)Written by Lindsay Kolowich

At one point or another, we all need inspiration to do our jobs better. Itdoesn't matter whether you're a marketing veteran who has navigatedthrough years of changing technology or a newbie fresh out of college -- weall need examples of outstanding content. It helps us get through creativeruts, make the case to our boss for experimentation, and improve our ownmarketing.

Most of the time, inspiration is easy to find because most marketing contentis publicly available. You can scour the internet or go on your favorite socialnetwork to see what your connections are talking about.

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The 3 Pillars of Consumer ConfidenceWritten by

No matter what your ecommerce strategy involves, gaining consumer

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confidence is crucial to achieving success in 2015. Unfortunately, there areno shortcuts: consumer confidence can only be earned through hard work,but it's a whole heck of a lot easier when you use these three easy steps asyour guide.

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Why Journalists Are Outranking Marketersin Search (And How We Can Compete)Written by Victoria Young

In the shifting sands of SEO, there’s one constant: It’s much better to top theSERPs than it is to rank on page two. How much better? Nearly 800%better.

And, as you’ll see in the tables below, when it comes to ranking in search,publications -- that is, actual news sites -- still do it best. The inboundmarketing movement, however, has helped bridge the gap that dividesbrands and publications.

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How to Make the Most of a 30 MinuteInterviewWritten by Eric Pratt

Hiring good people is difficult, time consuming, and costly. If you're in aconstant cycle of hiring like most growing organizations, I don't have to tellyou about the time warp it can cause-- but what about the cost?

The more interviews you do, the more you spend. The more of your timethat's absorbed in lengthy interviews the more likely you are to take shortcutsand make mistakes.

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How Often Should You Post on Social Media?Benchmarks for 9 Different IndustriesWritten by Maggie Hibma

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How often should you post to your social media accounts?

For many marketers, this question is tough. Here’s why: Social media is avery flexible and fluid part of your marketing strategy. It’s not easy to drawthe line between how much you could be posting and how muchyou should be posting.

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How to Use Analytics to Make SmarterMarketing Decisions [Free Webinar]Written by Rachel Sprung

Every marketer needs data. You need data to show your boss the value ofyour work. You need data to determine if a campaign is running smoothly.You need data to make decisions about what you should continue workingon -- and what you shouldn't.

But that doesn't mean every data point you can get your hands on isimportant to track. With only so much time in the day to measure yourmarketing performance, what pieces of data should you actually be

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monitoring? What are some of the vanity metrics that you don't really needto track?

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38 Incredibly Amusing Twitter BiosWritten by Jess Marranco

Perhaps one of the most challenging parts of making an impact on socialmedia is coming up with something profound in 140 characters. That’s right;I’m talking about the tweet.

A tweet is short, sweet, and to the point. And crafting one often leaves usstaring blankly at that little blinking cursor, hoping for a way to rephrase thetweet to let up some characters for an image, a link, or that ever-essentialhashtag.

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5 Infographics to Teach You How to EasilyMake Infographics in PowerPoint [FreeTemplates]Written by Erik Devaney

Despite the spattering of headlines that have popped up over the pastcouple years proclaiming "infographics are dead," infographics are, in fact,alive and well.

We just checked -- they're totally healthy. I mean, there are a lot of them, butwhen marketers spend the time aligning the topic, content, and style of theirinfographics with the needs and preferences of their target audiences,they're still finding success.

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Battle of the Brands: Which Famous RivalCompany Has Better Marketing?Written by Erik Devaney

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Ba da ba ba ba, I’m lovin’ it.

We can instantly identify their logos. We can hum along to their jingles.We’re on a first name basis with their mascots. We can repeat their slogansas mantra.

How were big brands like McDonald’s able to attain such a ubiquitousstatus?

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The Essential Guide to Using MobileMessaging Apps in Your MarketingWritten by Jami Oetting

This post originally appeared on Agency Post. To read more content likethis, subscribe to Agency Post.

Millennials. Generation Z. The two groups comprise the most coveted set ofconsumers. They are future clients and customers, and they will determine ifa brand lasts or lags behind. But they are a confusing group -- to brands

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(and their parents).

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