How User-Generated Content Builds Trust With Your Audience

Here’s a fun fact before we dive into the meat of this article: a single positive experience with your business or brand can fetch you more return on investment (ROI) than traditional marketing. Every brand tries to pitch itself as the ultimate solution to a potential customer’s problems. However, people are more likely to believe that proposition when others think so too. User-generated content helps you build that belief and trust.

Thousands of consumers check for reviews before handing money to a business. Therefore, brands that prioritise user-generated content often have a stable relationship with their audience. Keep reading to find out how user-generated content helps you achieve the same results.

What is User-Generated Content?

User-generated content is content that customers of a brand or business create about their experience. For example, think about your favourite content creator. They have probably talked about a new restaurant whose food they loved. Or they showed off nice clothes from a clothing brand. That is user-generated content. 

User-generated content ranges from online reviews on platforms like Google Business Reviews and Yelp to social media reviews like TikTok videos. Whatever form the content takes, it can help polish your marketing efforts. 

How Does User-Generated Content Build Trust?

Here are the four main ways user-generated content builds trust with your audience:

1. Relatability
2. Transparency
3. Proof
4. Engagement 

Relatability

User-generated content builds and fosters trust in your audience because it comes from a fellow consumer. The average consumer has something to lose when dealing with a brand for the first time. This could be money or time. Therefore, they can be quite hesitant to do business with you. However, when they see that other consumers have had good experiences with your brand, they are more willing to engage with your products or services. 

This is because they can relate to the consumers generating content. They can relate to the fact that the user generating the content was probably as hesitant as they are. Your audience can relate to the possibility of loss. As a result, they are more willing to trust you. 

Transparency

Businesses and brands are known for bending the truth to make more money. However, a fellow consumer isn’t, which means that their review is likely authentic. This might not hold for influencers who are often paid to review products. However, it is true for the regular Joe on the internet.

Using user-generated content shows your audience that you value transparency. It marks the presence of truthfulness and honesty in your brand values. This is because it spotlights the individual experience of regular people with your brand; therefore, building trust.

Proof

User-generated content is the proof in your marketing pudding. It shows that your business is truly capable of all the things you claim it is. People don’t always trust marketing tactics but they will trust proof of work. 

For example, let’s say you make and sell beaded bracelets. Anyone buying beaded products online will be worried about their durability. If you claim that your bracelets are durable, people might find that hard to believe. However, if three different customers claim your bracelets hold up well, your audience will trust your claim.

Engagement

User-generated content helps you engage better with your audience and this builds trust over time. For example, you need to engage with your customers to ask for reviews of your products or services. This engagement humanises your brand, showing that you are a real person that people can trust with their time and money. 

Without user-generated content, your level of engagement with your audience will likely be low. And this makes you appear as a random faceless brand. It is difficult for your audience to trust someone they don’t know. 

How Can You Utilise User-Generated Content?

You now know how user-generated content can help you build trust with your audience. However, how can you get this type of content and more importantly, how do you use it? These are some things you should keep in mind to utilise user-generated content:

Always Ask For Reviews

It is unlikely that a customer will give you a review unprovoked. You usually need to give them a small nudge in the right direction to get what you need. There are many ways to do this without seeming pushy. If you are a small online business on social media, you can send a quick text after completing a purchase or service.

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If your business has a website, consider sending a short email asking for a rating or review after an order is complete. Doing this takes some pressure off the customer and gives them the breathing space to give a review in their own time. 

Create an Incentive for User-Generated Content

Incentives are one of the best ways to get user-generated content because your audience is getting something out of it. This incentive doesn’t necessarily have to be large amounts of money. For example, if you have a clothing brand, you can offer to spotlight one customer every month. You can post their pictures on your social media platform, offering them some visibility. 

Another great example of using incentives is Oraimo’s point system. They offer points on their mobile app that customers can convert to discounts on their orders. Reviewing a past order gives a number of points. Adding a picture to this review ramps up even more points. This way, they are not short on reviews and user-generated content.

Harness Social Media’s Power

Social media is full of trends and hashtags and people hate to miss out on things. You can harness this power to generate user-generated content for free. An easy way to do this is to create a hashtag or a tagline. If your campaign gathers enough views, people will want to participate in it, creating content for you for free. 

For example, take a look at Spotify’s #Wrapped. It took social media, particularly Twitter (I am still refusing to call it X) and TikTok by storm. Spotify users posted their Wrapped, making written and video content about it. 

Get Consent Before Displaying

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When you finally get user-generated content, don’t hurriedly display it on your website or social media. Ensure you get consent from the creators first. Uploading user-generated content without consent can spell trouble for your brand down the line. It also reflects badly on you. 

After getting consent, feel free to display the content everywhere. You can run ads to further [increase the reach of the content. Additionally, you can also modify and repurpose the content for multiple platforms, increasing your visibility. 

Conclusion

Trust makes the difference between successful and unsuccessful marketing efforts. If nobody trusts you enough to handle their affairs, your business will likely die out from lack of funding. User-generated content is one of the major pillars behind building trust with your audience. This is because it is proof of your competency and it is relatable for the average consumer. 

You should be proactive when utilising user-generated content. Don’t wait for the mountain to come to you. Go to the mountain. Make it easy for your audience to generate content for you. And remember to always seek consent before publishing. 

Our home page at Shadow Scribes has a whole section dedicated to reviews. Our past clients have testified to the impactful work we do. Be one of those clients today and bring your brand into the light from the dark. How? Give us a call to find out. 

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