So, I guess your first question is why do I need to use bloggers to promote my business or product?

Successful bloggers have high following and this can create a high volume of awareness for your product (Busch, 2004). A report commissioned by the Affiliate Network (2015) identified that bloggers are the third most trusted source, behind family and friends; bloggers can therefore also influence consumers purchasing decisions as well as create awareness (Gillin, 2009). This can be achieved at a low cost (Black, 2015).  If you still unsure, take a look at Maz Deo blog to see the outcomes for a business that used bloggers.

So, I guess your second questions is how do I get a blogger to promote my business or product?

This is the ultimate question..

But, let me let you into 5 simple tips that will answer this question, so you and your business can enjoy the rewards of collaborating with bloggers.

1. Research bloggers

Create a short list for bloggers that are influential towards your target audience, this can be achieved using a number of free and simple tools. Allot is a free tool you can use to search for blogs that are highly engaged.

You can also use google search engine using long tail searches (Dean, 2017); for example, if you are a dress making company, search for top dress making blogs in the UK; see figure 1. Notice here it is of importance to search for bloggers specific to your target audience, this is because there is millions of blogs and thus, the more specific, the more chance these are the bloggers with your target audience (Borchadt, 2015). For example, simply searching for fashion bloggers will give you a range of fashion bloggers but their audience may not be interested in making their own dresses and thus may not be interested in your business despite marketing efforts from the bloggers; Brassington and Pettitt (2013) support this argument.

Figure 1

(google. co.uk, 2017)

Further to this, in your google search it is important to use terms such as “top” as bloggers need to have an engaged following in order to be influential (Fabrizio, 2016). However, it is not always the quantity of followers but their engagement and matching to your target market (Kersten, 2014) gaining access to smaller bloggers may be more realistic in terms of cost for smaller business (Borchadt, 2015)

However, it is also important to look for bloggers that already interact with your brand through social media this is because they are already engaged with your brand and thus it is easier to create a relationship with them (Kersten, 2014) and enhance their acceptability to promoting your business (Mikkles and Callahan, 2010; Kersten, 2014). Practically, this can be achieved simply by researching those people who engage in your social media to identify if they have their own publishing platform (Kersten, 2014). However, this can be time consuming Sreejesh et al (2013) argued that the availability of time is a key restraint to a lot of businesses, thus a business could set up google alerts to monitor mentions of your products/brand on blogs. Have a look at this quick YouTube video that shows how google alerts can be used.

2. Reach out

Note that to make this process easier check your short list of bloggers for Media, Work with Me, or PR page on their blog. Information about how to reach them to partner with your brand should be presented here, if it is follow their steps.

If not, follow these tips, if I’m honest, even if they have these pages, still follow these tips, the pages just show you that they are open to the email and working with you and thus making the whole process easier.

Firstly, start by reposting some of their content and offer complimentary comments on their content, this demonstrates that your are engaged and begins the relationship; Newlands (2011) argues that the relationship is the most important part to influencing bloggers to work with you and thus demonstrating the importance of taking time in this process.

The next step is the email,

Be personal. Chadwick et al (2010) argue that personalisation in emails increases engagement because it shows you value them as you have taken the time to write an email specific to them. However, also remember this is a professional relationship, for example do not start with Hi Mate, instead start with Hi *bloggers Name*; Clark (2010) supports this professional line. Take a look at Chadwick et al (2009) article on effective email marketing

Be genuine. Again, demonstrate you are already engaged with their content by commenting and complimenting on their recent post in you email.

Keep it concise. Bloggers can receive lots of emails, therefore to increase the chances of them reading and engaging with your email keep it to the point and short. Greissler et al (2006) supported this as they concluded that excessive information can have a negative influence on consumer attention; Chaffey (2010) added that this can lead to response decay, therefore, demonstrating the importance to keep all further emails to the blogger short and concise.

Have a call to action. Tell the bloggers what you would like them to do, for example, end the email by saying, please contact me for further details or we can arrange a meeting; ensure you give them all your contact information

Put this all together, here is an example of an email; see figure 2.

Figure 2

(Borchardt, 2015)

Have a look Holly Borchardt blog for more information of the format of the email.

3. Provide Incentives

To influencers bloggers to engage with your brand, you should offer them incentives (McAllister and West, 2013). This is in line with Vroom Expectancy Theory (1964) which displays that individuals are motivated to do something because they think their actions will lead to their desired outcome (Parijat and Bagga, 2014). Thus demonstrating it is important to ask the blogger what they would require. Kersten (2014) however argues, that bloggers with smaller blogs may like to be provided with free samples whereas bloggers with bigger blogs may require financial incentives. Thus it is important to tailor your incentive to your audience (Craig and Jaskiel, 2002).

4. Be specific about your objectives

Inform the blogger about your overall goals, for example, if you are asking them to promote a campaign, tell them there is a specific landing page you would like them to direct their audience too or a specific hashtag to use and encourage or a specific part of the campaign you would like them to focus on.

However, Cass (2007) agues that bloggers can be effective marketers and therefore businesses should be open to the bloggers ideas about how to promote your brand; demonstrating that yes you should be specific about what you want but not necessary how they achieve this.

5. Maintain a relationship

Ensure you thank the blogger if they have done what you have asked. If you have experienced favourable outcomes of the collaboration such as increased consumer engagement or sales that are a direct outcome from the bloggers promotional activity, then you may wish to use this marketing channel again. Thus, ensure you continue to follow them and comment on their content as Newlands (2011) identifies that this will enhance the probability of them being open to working with you in the future and thus reducing the resources spent on finding new effective bloggers.

As maintaining a relationship is key, take a look at Kirsten Mathew blog which explains how these can be achieved in greater detail.

So, that’s it, simple I know. So, go on, go enjoy the benefits of working with bloggers, don’t fall behind in the social media marketing game.

But,

Before you go, here are my top tips; just to save you time to read it all again later.

• Short list bloggers that are specific to your target audience and have an engaged following
• Take a look on their pages to see if they have media or PR pages and follow their advice and ways to contact them
• Ensure your email is personal, concise, genuine and has a call to action
• Offer incentives that correlates with what that specific blogger will expect
• Be specific about your objective but leave room for the blogger to have their input
• Maintain a relationship

Okay, now that really is it.

References

Affiliate Network (2015). Bloggers trusted more than celebrities, journalists, brands and politicians. [online] Available at: https://www.affili.net/uk/about-affilinet/press-and-news/2015/bloggers-trusted-more-than-celebrities-journalist [Accessed 3 May 2017].

Black, J. (2015). I Only Wanted to Sell Brushes. Page Publishing Inc.

Borchardt, H. (2015). How to Reach Out to Bloggers to Promote Your Brand. [online] Volume Nine. Available at: https://www.v9seo.com/blog/2015/07/29/how-to-reach-out-to-bloggers-to-promote-your-brand/ [Accessed 3 May 2017].

Busch, D. D. (2014). Perspectives on Branding. Cengage Learning

Cass, J. (2007). Strategies and Tools for Corporate Blogging. Routledge.

Chadwick, E., Dohery, F. and Neil, F. (2010). Web advertising: the role of email marketing. Journal of Business Research. 66(6) pp. 843-848

Chaffey, D. (2012). E- Business & E-Commerce Management. Pearson.

Chaffey, D. (2012) E-Business & E-Commerce Management, Pearson

Clark, L. E. (2010). How to Open and Operate a Financially Successful Bookkeeping Business. Atlantic Publishing

Craig, R. D. and Jaskiel, S. P. (2002). Systematic Software Testing. Artech House.

Dean, B. (2017). Blogger Outreach Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide. [online] Smart Blogger. Available at: https://smartblogger.com/blogger-outreach/ [Accessed 3 May 2017].

Fabrizio, M. (2016). Global Marketing Strategies for the Promotion of Luxury Goods. IGI Global

Geisler, G. L., Zinkhan, G. M. and Watson, R. T. (2006). The influence of home page complexity on consumer attention, attitudes and purchase intent. Journal of Advertising. 35(2). pp. 69-80

Gillin, P. (2009). The New Influencers: A Marketer’s Guide to the New Social Media. Linden Publishing.

Kersten, R. (2014). Using bloggers to promote your business – 5 simple tips. [online] Linkedin.com. Available at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/20140903220212-44322153-using-bloggers-to-promote-your-business-5-simple-tips [Accessed 3 May 2017].

Kumar, V. and Reinatrz. Customer Relationship Management: Concept, Strategy, and Tools. ed 2. Springer Science & Business Media.

McAllister, M. P. and West, E. (2013). The Routledge Companion to Advertising and Promotional Culture. Routledge.

Mikles, L. and Callahan, P. (2010). Engage Your Brand. Lulu.com

Newlands, M. (2011). Online Marketing: A User’s Manual. John Wiley & Sons.

Parijat, P. and Bagga, S. (2014). Victor Vroom’s Expectancy Theory of Motivation- An Evaluation. International Journal of Business Management. Vol VII, Issue, 9.

Sreejesh, S., M. and Anusree, M. R. (2013). Business Research Methods: An Applied Organisation. Springer Science & Business Media.

So firstly you might be wondering what an earth are hashtags?

A hashtag is a Metadata that helps add words to a catogery; to be a hashtag the word(s) must have the # symbol infront of it with no spacing, for example #fashionlove is correct #fashion love is not (Neff and Moss, 2016). The word will then go into the category to enable users to find your post (Neff and Moss, 2016). Check out Rebecca Hiscott blog for more detail on what hashtags are.

Secondly, you might be thinking why on earth do I have to use hashtags?

Bruns and Burgess argue that hashtags increase the audience level of a campagain while Saxton (2015) argued that hashtags enhance consumer engagement; Simply Measured (2014) research identified that the use of one hashtag can increase consumer engagement by 12.4% in contrast to the use of no hashtags. The need for hashtags is heighten within Instagram as the method to find pages is to search for a hashtag; unless you know the direct name (Dobson, 2017). Minazzi (2014) further argued that businesses with high consumer engagement experience higher levels of revenue and customer loyalty; with the high costs of acquiring new customers, customer retainment is of importance (Rosenberg and Czepial, 1984).

Thus, it is of importance to understand how to use hashtags effectively within an Instagram initiative (Wooldridge and Pierce, 2014).

Luckily, this blog will equip you with that information; so, you, yourself, yes you, can make an epic and memorable hashtags to fuel your Instagram marketing.

Be Specific  

Aynsley (2016) identifies that hashtags should only be used if they are relevant to your brand, industry and target audience. Unrelated hashtags may reduce your post reaching its targeted audience (Saxton, 2015), thus reducing the effectiveness of the marketing initiative (Price, 2012) because it’s not reaching people who can be turned into consumers (Steinbacher, 2004). For example, a specific hashtag would be #mineralfoundation instead of #foundation.

However, hashtags shouldn’t be too refined such as #minteralfoundationtannedskin as it will reduce the amount of users seeing it, thus decreasing the awareness of your post in which according to the AIDA model is the first stage to a sale (Gharibi et al, 2012).

Research what hashtags your competitors are using

By doing so, you can determine which hashtags provide the best consumer engagement (Loren, 2017) and these can be added to your post. Take a look at Eric Sornoso article which provides further guide to doing this effectively

Use hashtags that influential people within your industry are using

If you are a clothing retailer follow successful fashion bloggers on Instagram, such as Hanneli Mustaparta (Tai, 2017). Look at their hashtags within their posts. Within this example, all these influencers share the mutual hashtag of #OOTD (Outfit of the Day) (Instagram.com, 2017). Thus, you should be using these hashtags to increase your pages awareness because they are already established within your target audience (Aynsley, 2016).

However, these hashtags may be too generic and thus not reach your specific targeted audience (Levy, 2013). This process therefore should also be further refined to your segment, for example, if you are a hand man clothing retailer, also follow sewing bloggers, such as Dolly Clacket and Almond Rock who use Instagram to showcase their latest fashion creations (Aneira, 2017). Again, look at their use of hashtags, in this example, they all share a common theme hashtag of #sewcialists and #sewing (Instagram, 2017). The more specific your hashtag is to your targeted audience, the more effective it is, because this is the audience that your product/service is for (Aynsley, 2016; Levy, 2013) and thus can have an adverse effect on your revenue (Kelly and Williams, 2017).

Use Instagram’s search bar

Type a relevant word to your industry or Instagram post on Instagram’s search engine, for example, #handmadewardrobe; Instagram will put a list of words associated with that word with the number of posts containing those hashtags; See figure 2. It is important to note that hashtags containing and large amount of content may result in your posts getting lost and not having an impact on your target audience (Anysley, 2017), thus have a mixture of niche and popular hashtags.

Figure 1: Instagram Search Bar

 (Instagram.com, 2017)

Number of Hashtags

In contrast to Facebook and Twitter, there is no adverse effect between higher number of hashtags and consumer engagement; Simply Measured (2014) research identified that the use of one hashtag can increase consumer engagement by 12.4% in contrast to the use of no hashtags.  The maximum number of tags is 30, however, a study from TrackMaven (2017)displayed that the optimum is around the 5 mark; see figure 3

Figure 3: Interactions by Number of Hashtags

(TrackMaven, 2017)

However, a new Instagram initiative might want to use a number of specific hashtags to gain a higher audience level due to a smaller amount of followers (Roberson, 2016) thus there is a technique to hide your hashtags to reduce your post looking cluttered (Anysley, 2016). Check out this YouTube video that illustrates this simple technique.

Read your hashtags

It is of importance you ensure that your hashtags read how you want them too and cannot be interpreted differently to cause offence. Get a third party to read through them to check for this. Take a look at some hashtags fails.

Encourage User Generated Content

If the advice on this blog was rated; this would be the Usain Bolt of advice…

From my last blog, you will be aware of the benefits of UGC. I’ve probably just caught a number of you out; You haven’t read my last blog have you.. Don’t worry, I forgive you. But, let me quickly provide you with 1 fact about UGC.

93% of consumers find UGC to be helpful when making a purchasing decision (Gotter, 2016).

If you’re not as crazy about UGC as I am, take a look at this link

Back to hashtags;

Within your Instagram campagain create a branded hashtag that encourages users to use the hashtag in their posts. To illustrate this, let’s take a look at ASOS successful use of a hashtag to influence user generated content.

ASOS’s asked costumer’s to use the hashtag #AsSeenOnMe when wearing outfits purchased by ASOS for a chance to be reposted on their Instagram page; See figure 4. The hashtag encourages customer engagement through giving people an opportunity to express themselves (Oh et al, 2008; Sirgy, 1982) with the reward of recognition from their community peers (Anderson, 2016). The hashtag was used to increase engagement and sales; the page has a high following with 60.2k followers and overall sales increased by 18% after the launch of the campagain (Vizard, 2016).

Figure 4

(Instagram.com, 2017)

Inspire your audience

The competive nature of social media marketing (Wilson, 2016) may mean that hashtags need to gain users interest to aid to generate UGC (Domingue et al, 2012). This can be achieved through using hashtags to inspire your audience (Carr and Newell, 2012). This is the approach that Sports England took in their campagain to improve female participation in sports (Kemp, 2016). They asked users to tag the hashtag #ThisGirlCan in their sporting photos to inspire other women (Kemp, 2016); see figure 5. Take a look at their success in doing this.

Figure 5

(Instagram.com, 2017)

So, that’s it, simple I know, so what’s stopping you from taking on the Instagram hashtag world?

Just quickly, here are my tops tips for an effective hashtag on Instagram;

Ø  Be specific

Ø  Look at the hashtags that competitors and industry influencers are using

Ø  Allow your hashtags to encourage and inspire user generated content

Ø  Ensure your hashtags read how you want and can’t be interpreted differently

References

Anderson, P. (2016). Web 2.0 and Beyond: Principles and Technologies

Aneira. (2016). 5 of the Best Sewing Bogs to Follow in 2016. [online] Williamgee.co.uk. Available at: http://www.williamgee.co.uk/5-of-the-best-sewing-blogs-to-follow-in-2016/

Aynsley, M. (2016). The Complete Instagram Hashtag Guide. [online] Hootsuite Social Media Management. Available at: https://blog.hootsuite.com/instagram-hashtags/ [Accessed 16 Apr. 2017].

Burney, K. (2017). Everything Marketers Need To Know About Instagram Sponsored Content – TrackMaven | Marketing Analytics Software. [online] TrackMaven | Marketing Analytics Software. Available at: https://trackmaven.com/blog/everything-marketers-need-know-instagram-sponsored-content/ [Accessed 17 Apr. 2017].

Carr, M. G. and Newell, L. H. (2013). Guide to Fashion Entrepreneurship: The Plan, the Product, the Process. A&C Black

Domingue, J., Abramowicz, W. and Wecel, K. (2012). Business Information Systems Workshops. Springer.

GHARIB, S., YAHYAH, S., DANESH, S. and SHAHROD, K. (2012). EXPLAIN THE EFFECTIVENESS OF ADVERTISING USING THE AIDA MODEL. INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY RESEARCH IN BUSINESS, 4(2).

Instagram.com (2017) [online] avariable at: https:// www.instagram.com [accessed 10/04/2017]

Jevons, C. and Gabbott, M. (2000), “Trust, Brand Equity and Brand Reality in Internet Business Relationships: an interdisciplinary approach,” Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 16, no.6, pp. 619-634.

Kelly, M. and Williams, C. (2017). BUSN. Ed 10. Cengage Learning.

Kemp, N. (2016). Case study: How ‘This girl can’ got 1.6 million women exercising. [online] Campaignlive.co.uk. Available at: http://www.campaignlive.co.uk/article/case-study-this-girl-can-16-million-women-exercising/1394836 [Accessed 17 Apr. 2017].

Levy, S. (2013). Tweet Naked: A Bare-All Social Media Strategy for Boosting Your Brand and Your Business. Entrepreneur press.

Loren, T. (2017). The Ultimate Guide to Instagram Hashtags in 2017. [online] Later Blog. Available at: https://later.com/blog/ultimate-guide-to-using-instagram-hashtags/ [Accessed 16 Apr. 2017].

Minazzi, R. (2014). Social Media Marketing in Tourism and Hospitality. Springer

Neff, D. J. and Moss, R. C. (2011). The Future of Nonprofits: Innovate and Thrive in the Digital Age. John Wiley & Sons.

Oh, J., Susarla, A. and Tan Y. (2008). Examining the diffusion of user-generated content in online social networks. Working Paper Series. [Online] Available at: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1182631

Price, K. (2012). Twitter for Trainers. American Society for Training and Development

Roberson, K. (2016). Business Success Made Easy. Lulu Press, Inc.  

Rosenberg, L. and Czepial, J. (1984). A marketing approach for customer retention. Journal of Customer Marketing, 1, 45-51.

Saxton, G. D., Niyirora, J. N., Guo, C. and Waters, R. D. (2015). #AdvocatingForChange: The Strategic Use of Hashtags in Social Media Advocacy. Advances in Social Work. Vol. 16, No. 1. pp 154-169

Simply Measured (2014). Q3 2014 Instagram Study. Simply Measured.

Sirgy M. J. (1982). Self-concept in consumer behaviour: A critical review. The Journal of Consumer Research. 9(3): 287-300

Steinbacher, L. (2004).The Professional Organizer’s Complete Business Guide. Lulu Enterprises Incorporated

Tai, C. (2017). 15 Inspirational Style Bloggers to Follow on Instagram in 2017. The Fashion Spot. [online] Availiable at: http://www.thefashionspot.com/style-trends/668547-top-fashion-bloggers-on-instagram/#/slide/3 [Acccessed 04/04/2017]

Vizard, S. (2015). Asos loyalty scheme to put focus on engagement as well as purchases. [online]. Marketing Week. Available at:  https://www.marketingweek.com/2015/10/20/asos-puts-focus-on-mobile-and-content-as-it-rolls-out-loyalty-scheme-to-uk-shoppers/ [Accessed 04/04/2017]

Woolderidge, D. and Pierce, T. (2014). The Business of IOS App Development: For iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. Ed. 3. Apress.

Wilson, O. (2012). Competitive Social Media Marketing Strategies. Ed. 2. IGI Global.

So, what is user generated content?

To classify as user generated content (UGC), data posted by users on the web must meet the following criteria (Moens et al, 2014);

1. Publically available to other users
2. Contain an element of creative effort
3. Composed by the general public outside their professional environment

Customer reviews are an example of UGC (Eastin, 2010).

Web 2.0 has enabled UGC (Mackinnon, 2012) and now UGC has embedded itself in importance in today’s society for businesses (Wunsch-Vincent and Vikery, 2006).

Are you wondering why?

Yes? Take a look at this infographic.

Figure 1 (Offerpop.com, 2017)

Consumers are exerting greater influence over products and brands than the brand itself (Jevons and Gabbott, 2000; Reigner 2007)

If you’re still on the fence about the advantages of UGC, take a look at these statistics https://www.tintup.com/blog/38-mind-blowing-stats-effectiveness-user-generated-content/

So, now let me let you into 7 secrets to pull off an effective user generated initiative using Instagram as a platform.

But, don’t tell anyone; shh

Figure 2 (windsock.io, 2017)

1. Be Lawful

Ensure you hold the rights to repost users content. This can be attained by operating within implied consent (MacDonald, 2015). For example, coco-cola requested consumer’s used their #ShareaCoke hashtag on their photos to imply they are aware of the companies aim to repost the content and therefore implied consent was achieved (Macdonald, 2015). Still unsure? Here is a guide to staying lawful https://www.tintup.com/blog/social-media-rights-a-guide-to-user-generated-content/

2. Have a clear goal of the purpose of the user generated content

According to SEMrush, 86% of business have tried user-generated content, but, GoodVid identified only 27% have a UGC strategy (York, 2016). Without goals, an initiative cannot be measured for effectiveness and therefore resources can be being used without a favorable return (Keyes, 2009). Businesses also need to express to users specifically what they want from the content and this in turn can reduce un-valuable content (York, 2016).

However, Muniz and Schau (2007) argued that requests of content also need to be realistic to engage consumers, while Wathieu et al (2002) argued that users still want to have control over their posted content. Therefore, a balance needs to exist. Dominque Jackson provides a useful blog on how to set realistic goals http://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-goals/

McDonalds, for example, asked users to share a story about their children’s happy meals. McDonalds did not specify to positive experiences. Subsequently, the majority of what they received were negative posts about experiences (Hurlburt, 2017). Figure 3 illustrates an example. This in turn, damaged McDonald’s reputation and didn’t satisfy their marketing goal.

Figure 3 (Hurlburt, 2017)

3. Create hashtags

Hashtags allows users to share a message of a campagain (Saxton, 2015) which in turn increases the audience of a campaign (Saxton, 2015). Businesses should request users to tag specific hashtags into their photos. Zeller (2015) argues hashtags should consist of words specific to the campaign and also trending hashtags. The popular hashtags increase your likes and therefore audience to the specific hashtags (Zeller, 2015). Hashtagify.me and RiteTag are tools to search popular hashtags. Have a go yourself https://ritetag.com/.

However, it is also important to ensure your hashtags are researched as they ultimately represent your business. Here are some examples of how hashtags can go epically wrong.

#susanalbumparty.. Susan Boyle’s management aimed to use this hashtag to promote the launch of her new album as seen in figure 4…. wait till you see it

Figure 4 (Hurlburt, 2017)

Celeb Boutique identified that “Aurora” was trending and decided to promote their Kim Kardashian-inspired Aurora dress using the hashtag as shown in figure 5. However, what they failed to notice was that Aurora was trending due to the horrific mass shooting that occurred during the Dark Knight Rise theater showing (Loginradius.com, 2017).

Figure 5 (Hurlburt, 2017)

Want to know more?

Login Radius provide an insightful article about companies failed hashtags https://blog.loginradius.com/2015/04/hashtag-fails/

4. Create an online community

McAlexander et al (2002) argued that those integrated into a brand community are inclined to have increased loyalty to that brand. Burhmann and Annrold (2008) and Kishnamurthy and Dou (2008) identified that community development and interaction are cited as social drivers of UGC.

Sport England’s “This Girl Can” campaign is an example of a success story for creating an online community. It’s goal was to increase sport participation in females (Kemp, 2016). The initiative received over 500,000 active members of the “This girl can” social-media community (Kemp, 2016). With regards to Instagram, it asked females to use the hashtag #thisgirlcan in their sporting photos. The campaign demonstrated how inspiration plays an invaluable role in building a community (Kemp, 2016) shown in Figure 6.

Figure 6 (Instagram, 2017).

5. Give recognition

Consumers expect brands to respond to their content (Habibi, Richard, & Laroche, 2013), while the Uses and Gratifications Theory argued that users of the media actively seek to the media to satisfy their needs (Palmgreen, Wenner, & Rosengren, 1985). The high competition within social media marketing (Neti, 2011) means that it is invaluable to provide recognition and engagement to meet consumer’s needs. An example of this can be in the form of Instagram reposts or shout outs.

However, effective campaigns can receive thousands of user generated content, therefore it can be unrealistic to respond to each one individually. Tips however include;

• Regularly engage with different users
• Post content thanking users for their participation. Barrington and Pettitt (2013) argued that consumers who feel valued by a brand are more inclined to become engaged to that brand
• Inspire those to remain engaged. For example, in the #thisgirlcan campaign, Sport England would regularly post inspiring quotes as seen in figure 6.

6. Provide Incentive

Barrington and Pettitt (2013) recognised that incentives can provide motivation for consumer engagement and can further attract new consumers rather than just targeting loyal customers. It is also important to identify whether incentives are given through a contest or sweepstake as well as having well defined rules, in order to stay lawful (Drell, 2013).

However, consumer engagement shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be defined by tangible rewards, this is specifically important for smaller businesses with limited resources. Consumer incentive can be through expression of oneself (Oh et al, 2008; Sirgy, 1982) with the reward of recognition from their community peers (Jacobs, 2008)

ASOS captailise on this with their “As seen on me” initiative where consumers tag #asseenonme onto their Instagram post for a chance to be featured on ASOS official page, shown in figure 7 (Instagram, 2017).

Figure 7 (Instagram, 2017).

7. Analyse and measure your content

You need to ensure your user generated content initiative is fulfilling its purpose, if not, you then need to adjust it to reduce resources just being wasted (Wirtz, 2016). Tools such as social sprout enable users to achieve this time efficiently, it’s worth considering, here’s a link http://sproutsocial.com/features/social-media-analytics

So my top 7 tips include;

1. Stay lawful
2. Have a clear purpose of the user generated content
3. Create hashtags
4. Create an online community
5. Provide recognition
6. Provide incentive
7. Analyse your initiative

Right, that’s 7 tips and let’s be honest they are not complicated, so what’s stopping you from producing a killer user generated content campagain?

Before you go, check out Katherine MacKinnon’s (2012), User Generated Content vs. Advertising: Do Consumers Trust the Word of Others over Advertisers article in the Elon Journal of Undergraduate Research in Communications, Vol. 3, No. 1, it gives for an insightful read.

References

Brassington, F. and Pettitt, S. (2013). Essentials of Marketing. Pearson Education Limited: Harlow.

Burmann, C. and Ulrike, A. (2008). User Generated Branding. State of the Art Research. Vol 8, Berlin:

Drell, L. (2013). Lessons From 4 Killer UGC Campaigns. [online] Mashable. Available at: http://mashable.com/2013/01/30/brand-marketing-user-generated-content/#5KE.cMqHgGqR [Accessed 13 Feb. 2017].

Habibi, M.R., Laroche, M., & Richard, M. (2014). Brand communities based in social media: How unique are they? Evidence from two exemplary brand communities .International Journal of Information Management, 34, 123-132

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Well Done Argos

The digital movment has fully erupted and companies need to devleop with this. Argos, have accepted this and are updating their stores to become more technological pleasing. Agros, wanted to capture how their customers felt about this change. The company have understood the traditional word of mouth has envoled and customers are now using social media channels to voice opinons. Brandwatch Analytics provided Argos with just this. Brandwatch were described as the “magic” that transformed data from their customers into invaluable insights for Argos to allow Argos to understand their customers and who is behind the comment.

Argos, operate an excess of 50 new digital stores, undoubtbly, they realised that segmenting social data was the first step to managing it; location is a prime example of this. Brandwatch Analytics allowed Argos to create categories for all its digital stores, incorporating location data with other critera such a street names. Comments then linked to the correct stores and can be used to ensure that their own customers have an enjoyable experience.

Elle’s Key Points

• Having data is great, however, in order to be valuable a company needs to understand it and use it to improve their products and servies.

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