In a nutshell
UGC is posts, photos and reviews that customers made and shared of their own accord. It stands for User Generated Content. Examples include a post with a photo of a dish, impressions after trying a product, and a video showing a visit to your shop.
How it differs from official posts
| Official post | UGC | |
|---|---|---|
| Who makes it | The shop or company | Customers |
| How viewers take it | Read as promotion | Read as an experience |
| Volume | As much as your staff can handle | Grows with the number of customers |
However carefully an official post is made, talk about yourself is inevitably read as promotion. The strength of UGC is that a third party's experience is a source of trust on its own.
To get more of it, make it easy for people to post. For example, a plating that makes people want to take a photo, a corner of your shop, or a call asking them to include your shop name or a set phrase. When you are featured, responding with a quote or a thank-you reply leads to the next post too.
What to watch for when featuring it
When you feature a customer's post on your official account, don't forget that the rights to the photo and text belong to that person. Featuring it with a network's repost or quote feature stays within the way that network provides. On the other hand, when you save an image and republish it from your official account, or use it in an ad or flyer, the basic rule is to get permission from the person who posted it.
Conversely, a post the shop asked someone to write, or one for which a reward was given, is not a customer's spontaneous voice. Hiding that it is an ad may fall under Japan's stealth marketing rules in the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations. The thinking is explained in Influencer and The basics of social media campaigns and Japan's premiums law. The whole picture of how to gather and handle UGC is gathered in UGC and handling customers' posts.
In SNS TOWN
A campaign that makes a reply the entry condition gives customers a reason to post in their own words. For replies containing a keyword you set, Auto replies can send a personal thank-you to each person.
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