In Marketing, Instagram and UGC, if we ever try to find something equally important for three of them, it will be the audience. If we directly move into the marketing first, a question you would surely like to answer is, how do you think Instagram is even better for marketing?
As we all know, Instagram was not originally made for it. Then why we are not only doing something other than building connections but also focusing on improving marketing in it? Well, to answer that, we should realise that, having started with the traditional ways of marketing, that was completely offline, we have grown and touched an online version of it today.
Then social media networks like Instagram arrived with such an interactive user interface and dynamic functionalities, that the marketers just couldn’t retard them. Instagram like other visual platforms not only attracts the audience but also convinces the user to interact and engage with it regularly. And this is the reason why Instagram is into marketing these days. Let us explore the connection of Instagram with Marketing a bit more.
Marketing And Instagram
Instagram is the one that gets more than a billion active users every month. Also, it is the one with 75 percent success rate with its Ads. After seeing such a successful success rate, we can at least believe that Instagram has something that makes it a marketing-friendly platform despite being a social media network.
To me personally, the UI and the functionalities of Instagram like eCommerce friendly layout, shopability within the network, embedding facility are some of the reasons because of which Instagram is growing in marketing separately with unstoppable speed.
Let us now move towards the second but the most important context of this blog i.e. UGC or user-generated content. We’ll try to find out how it is helpful in marketing first of all. Then how it can help in the improvement of Instagram marketing? And even before it, we’ll explore the core of UGC itself as what it is all about? Where it comes from and how Instagram is connected to it?
UGC In Brief
If something is generated by the users of social media at random, or without a commercial intention, it can be claimed as user-generated content. As far as digital marketing through Instagram or Instagram marketing is concerned, we should realise that Instagram is full of users, and almost 95 million posts are posted every day.
Every post might have at least a hashtag added to it. If not, it may have a location-tagged, a few keywords mentioned, or any brand or person tagged to it. Even if nothing out of them is in it, a user who posts an image can be considered as connected to it. Though the UGC is not defined through them, but these are a few attributes that any user-generated post must be consisting of. And Instagram marketing is something that revolves around UGC.
How UGC Is Useful For Instagram Marketing
Instagram is the visual king. And marketing is impossible without visuals. The countless UGC on Instagram becomes valuable for Instagram marketing when you utilise it in a smarter way. As far as eCommerce brands and businesses are concerned, there is more than 80 percent of eCommerce brands present on Instagram. 7 out of 10 hashtags are brand-related.
The trend of representing the product with ordinary white background images have gotten obsolete. Vogue brands are using UGC as their product examples and trust me they are getting an unexpected hike in user engagement. For those who consider only images and videos as visuals, it would be better for them to know that visuals are everything that can be visible, which means it can be either text or an infographic too.
Visuals uploaded by Instagram users are user-generated content. However, the quality of UGC matters a lot for getting marketed. If any visual is no way better, it gets discarded later on through moderation or profanity filters of social media aggregators. There are numerous other benefits as well that a marketer can extract from UGC alone.
By understanding the fact that optimisation means for improvement, we’ll be focusing now on how UGC can optimise Instagram marketing.
It Takes You To The Costless Marketing Zone. Marketing on Instagram includes promotional cost plus the investment in content creation. The promotional cost is not even 10 percent of what it takes to create the content in a traditional way. With UGC, you get rid of the potential investment and will almost be in the costless marketing zone.
Embed Instagram Feed On Your Website. We can say that Instagram-generated content is exceptionally beneficial for eCommerce brands because Instagram is believed to have more than 80 percent of eCommerce brands. Also, with more than a billion users, it is no way less of eCommerce friendly content. Embedding is one of the most trending Instagram marketing methods today. It is a process in which the Instagram feed is attached to your eCommerce website and the user engagements are expected to go higher by showcasing UGC to the website audience.
Here are the 3 simple steps for Embedding through an Instagram aggregator:-
- Aggregation of Instagram-generated content through an Instagram aggregator. You have to create an Instagram feed with the help of hashtags, usernames, locations, or keywords within the Instagram aggregator. This is the first step for the re-utilisation of Instagram based UGC on your eCommerce website.
- Moderation and acquiring of UGC rights through it. Once you are ready with the curated Instagram feed, now is the time to filter it i.e. moderation and seek permission for the rights to re-use the UGC. The process of UGC rights management is described in the last part of this blog.
- Personalisation and generating the ‘embed code’. Now, if you have acquired all the rights to use the UGC, now you can even edit or personalise the content according to your requirements. And when you are ready with all the editing, you can now generate the code to embed your curated Instagram-generated content feed and paste it on your website.
Marketers and eCommerce business owners are nowadays readily embedding their brand’s Instagram-generated content as they not only showcase their global recognition through it but also they save themselves from the investment in content creation.
The hashtag campaigns similarly are also the most preferred marketing trend but are dedicated to hashtags only whereas embedding is a broader way.
You Can Start A Hashtag Campaign And Earn Through It. Running Instagram hashtags is one of the most trending marketing tactics marketers are adopting today. Hashtag campaigns were under-rated at their early stage but the audience is now understanding the worth of it. As Coca Cola’s #ShareACoke is the examples of its potential and influence.
Once you get your hashtag well-known to the audience, you can either embed your hashtag feed from Instagram on your website or choose to display an Instagram hashtag slideshow screen in events for even better audience engagement.
Instagram’s UGC Can Increase Trust For Your Brand. Well, as far as an eCommerce business is concerned, having Instagram UGC as your brand product’s examples would be a valuable asset. People would rather believe someone who has really used the product than the brand’s promotional promises. That’s the concept behind how UGC can increase your brand’s trust over the audience.
When you embed your brand’s Instagram-based content, which must be having genuine buyers and older customers in it, it leaves a trustworthy impression in the audience. Instagram boasts the highest average order value ($65) of the “big four” social commerce sites (competing against Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest).
And with all such known figures and facts about the popularity of Instagram, I don’t think it is now required to explain why Instagram based content is best for your eCommerce business. Hence, so far we have talked about the benefits of UGC and its effect on Instagram marketing, yet there is an important concern regarding UGC and that is “UGC Rights Management”.
It is very obvious that when you utilise someone’s belongings, you must have the right to use them first. UGC rights management is all about it. Instagram is already full of users and quality visuals. Suppose, if we are using more than a hundred of visuals for our UGC marketing campaign, we should ask for the rights from the users. UGC Rights management tools help you requesting the rights of UGC from the owners.
Final words – Instagram is growing old but keeps on shining along with its age. It is not only glowing as a social media pioneer but also reigning in the marketing world. 31% of internet users between the ages of 18 and 24 use Instagram and 130 million Instagram accounts tap on a shopping post to learn more about products every month. Thus, Instagram is no way a poor platform for marketing.
UGC, on the other hand, has an amazing drift across the world and is enough explained in this blog to understand its worth and potential. Now it is on you to choose the best marketing tool that not only can aggregate Instagram-based UGC but also works as a UGC Rights management tool for you.
