A beautiful image gallery, a huge fan following, and incredible audience engagement- sounds like a marketer’s dream.

Isn’t it?

Well, this dream can come true if user-generated content is put to use in the right way.

User-Generated Content is like a free gold mine. In other words, your customers are your best marketers. Their content is more trustworthy and genuine than any high-quality graphics content created by your brand itself.

Here is a 5 step guide that will help you foster social trust and build a social brand image with the help of user-generated content.

1.Clearly Define Your Campaign Goals

The best part about user-generated content is that it can be driven in any direction as it is dynamic and multidimensional.

So, the first most important thing to do is to define your marketing campaign goals and direct all your efforts in that direction.

Obviously, with time your goals and direction of the campaign will modify and undergo changes but having a clear headstart is essential for any successful marketing campaign.

Remember! As a brand, you are the navigator of your user’s journey on social media.

Every piece of content that you post on social media must define the same undertone of your brand, work culture, and ethics.

So, deciding which content will finally be posted online should be properly brainstormed according to your campaign goals.

2. Create A System To Collect UGC And Find The Best Content For Your Brand

Having decided to use User-Generated Content for your campaign, now you need to develop a system to find the best user-generated content for your brand marketing.

In order to let people know and encourage them to create user-generated content for your brand, you need to create a buzz about your brand.

Here are some ways how you can do so-

Organize contests and quizzes and reward the winners and contributors with recognition on your official website and giveaways.

Use hashtags and organize hashtag contests. Reward your contributors.

Ask Questions to your users about their experiences encouraging them to give feedback and reviews.

Create a buzz about your brand by launching social media campaigns.

Once it is done, you could employ a social media aggregator and display tool to fetch user-generated content from various social media platforms and display them all together on a social wall in a customizable and attractive way.

You could try Taggbox for the purpose.

3. Focus More On Social Curation than Social Creation

When user-generated content is pouring in from all direction, then the focus must be more on Social Content Curation rather than Social Content Creation.

As a marketer, with the content creation part, sorted out, all you need to worry now is about maintaining the quality of your content.

Using content curation tools like Taggbox are a great help in this respect.

They let you curate, and moderate your content and filter out the irrelevant ones from being displayed to your audience.

They allow you to decide if you want to hide or show "text-only" content or highlight a particular hashtag or treat your content in any other customizable way.

4. Post Seasonal Content

So, now that you are all done with content creation, curation, and customization, now it’s time to post your content online or display it on your website.

You could schedule your content following a particular plan or post seasonal content that relates with the audience.

Seasonal content and campaigns instill excitement among the customers due to it’s limited time branding which further encourages and boosts engagement among the customers.

Timing is everything when it comes to posting seasonal content.

During seasonal breaks, most people while traveling or waiting in a line spend their time scrolling down social media. Be the first thing they see when they scroll down their social media.

5. Humanize Your Brand- Support A Cause

The very first step of humanizing your brand is to not only showcase user experience but also showcase your employee experience.

Because as a matter of fact, public trust opinions coming from brand experts.

They are the ones working for your brand. So, displaying their content online also helps you build trust among your customers.

Another way of humanizing your brand is to support a social cause. One that concerns the majority of your customer base.

This helps you to establish a personal link between the brand and the customers.

It is a great way of earning social trust and building yourself as a brand that matters and takes stand for the principles it believes in.