This day and age, social media plays an integral part in different marketing platforms and marketing strategies in general. It has gained more respect than just an area where younger generations can go to pass their time. However, businesses have realised the potential that this could have, by tapping into this as a means to reach out to wider audiences, that are already readily available.
Visuals are more stimulating to the mind than black lines on a white background and the cliché, ‘a picture speaks a thousand words’, is more relevant now then it ever was, using a single picture on Instagram which can say more than a paragraph on a page. The rising age of ephemeral content where Snapchat is taking the social media game by storm, where content can be shared and viewed for only a limited period, has this generation engulfed by it.
However, what is more effective, content that’s made by the user for the user or content that is made by business intended to entice the consumer?
In any case content using the means of a video, which you are trying to portray some sort of message needs to be succinct and presented in a memorable way. Done well, a video can be extraordinarily persuasive.
However, to make good and often effective content which resonates with the consumer can be quite costly, hiring out cameras and cameramen, developing a script on what you want the audience learn and bring this altogether with editing can be time consuming and expensive. Therefore, having those that will use your product or service (the consumer) to produce your content in the eyes of the consumer to the consumer (user-generated content), could be more effective and less costly.
The benefit of this is that for consumers, besides the potential to inform or entertain, the content gives a glimpse into real data from other people, un-touched by regular media outlets (Krumm, J., Davies, N. and Narayanaswami, C., 2008).
Snapchat has really invested in this idea of user generated content, with a new feature called live stories, this essentially is the users posting content of pictures and video of a particular event as it happens, Snapchat are relying on their user base to post onto these stories which others around the globe can view as it happens.
Not only this but once you see a particular moment in these stories you can swipe to see other angles of this moment taken from other users on the social network using an algorithm-based curation, which they call story explorer, this is essentially creating more engagement between their users, creating an integrated network of people contributing to produce a story that can be enjoyed by potentially billions of people.
Once more this is an opportunity for advertising where business can use this to increase their brand awareness to the billions of those that are not there during that event (Wagner, 2015).
In an article by Mashable UK with the help of marketing start-up Crowd tap and the global research company Ipsos they explore how the connected generation get their news. Knoblauch, (2014,) outlined that in actuality millennials (those born between 1980-1995) trust user-generated content (UGC) as much or more than professionally made content, in fact UGC is also 20% more influential when it comes to purchasing and 35% more memorable than other types of media.
They surveyed 839 people aged between 18-36 in 2014, what they found was that within an 18 hour per day media intake, 5 hours was spent on UGC which equalled to 30%, 33% was spent on traditional media (TV, radio, etc) while the remaining 37% was spent on other media. Most of UGC came from social networks at 71% while 60% was content from the TV outlets. Please have a look at this image bellow which would outline more about the advantages of UGC over traditional content.
Image 1: Millennials love UGC
Most consumers, regardless of age, go to the internet to research purchases. And most of them look for user-generated content (UGC) to help them buy. According to the survey, over half (51%) of Americans trust UGC more than other information on a company website (16%) or news articles about the company (14%) when looking for information about a brand, product, or service. (source: Bazaarvoice)
Image 2: Top purchases that wont be completed without UGC (source: Bazaarvoice)
However, with all this in mind, it does look very convincing that UGC is much better than professionally made content. A study by comscore a leader in measuring the digital world, and EXPO, the first consumer network focused on creating and distributing high impact product videos found that UGC and professionally made content work better hand in Hand, they both work very well as their own entities however when combined they were more effective than both elements individually (comScore, Inc, 2012).
A quote from comscore on this study:
“It seems that professionally-produced content and user-generated product videos are each successful at delivering different key elements to a consumer through video ‘advertising’,” said Jessica Thorpe, Vice President of Marketing at EXPO. “We found that consumers perceived feature benefits as more believable when coming directly from the brand through professionally-produced content, while the unbiased user-gen videos were more believable in verifying specific product claims, such as superiority and convenience. When used together, all of the perceived gaps get filled in and consumers become more confident in their purchase decision, resulting in better sales effectiveness from the advertising.”
You can find the results and more information, here: comscore.
Therefore, in conclusion those companies that are only producing professionally made content are not harnessing as much as they can without allowing a means for UGC as well, with means such as Snapchat stories, mini viral videos or even interactive videos for more engagement etc.
References
ComScore, Inc, (2012). comScore Study Finds Professionally-Produced Video Content And User-Generated Product Videos Exhibit Strong Synergy in Driving Sales Effectiveness. [online] Available at: http://www.comscore.com/Insights/Press-Releases/2012/3/comScore-Study-Finds-Professionally-Produced-Video-Content-And-User-Generated-Product-Videos-Exhibit-Strong-Synergy-in-Driving-Sales-Effectiveness [Accessed 26 Jan. 2016].
Knoblauch, M. (2014). Millennials Trust User-Generated Content 50% More Than Other Media. [online] Mashable. Available at: http://mashable.com/2014/04/09/millennials-user-generated-media/#uWA4UGZB9gqa [Accessed 26 Jan. 2016].
Krumm, J., Davies, N. and Narayanaswami, C., 2008. User-generated content. IEEE Pervasive Computing, (4), pp.10-11.
Wagner, K. (2015). Snapchat Gets Deeper Into Live Events, Wants More User-Generated Content. [online] Re/code. Available at: http://recode.net/2015/11/23/snapchat-gets-deeper-into-live-events-wants-more-user-generated-content/ [Accessed 26 Jan. 2016].