Crowdsourcing Content- How it Benefits Brands Today
Social media is all about connecting, especially in this day in age it is the best way for brands to create meaningful connections with their audiences. As it evolves, brands must find new ways to keep their consumers interested and evolved through their content. Strengthening the two-way communication and making consumers feel like an integral part of the brand can make all the difference in its success. Consumers like to be heard, so providing them with opportunities to do so by crowdsourcing content and furthering the connection with their audience. Letting your target audience get involved is like handing out the mic at a conference (Bratvold, 2018). A brand’s consumers are already actively expressing themselves on their own social profiles. They share their thoughts, what they do every day, and what they like. Utilizing that information and involvement, brands can aim to build their social media campaigns to result in success.
Integrating crowdsourcing into your brand social initiatives is a way of looking beyond your brand’s internal capacity for ideation, and turning the question over to a wider group of thinkers, your own consumers (Fournier, 2019). One of the most popular and proven to be beneficial sources of crowdsourcing content is using UGC, User Generated Content. As a social media manager, I have personally seen the success of utilizing UGC in social campaigns.
Content that is curated to your brand and captured by your audience appeals to users on social media in a different way. They can step into the shoes of the UGC and ultimately see themselves using your brand. It also makes your current consumer base feel like brand ambassadors of some sort and will encourage them and others to continue sharing content about your brand. In a recent report, AdWeek found that 85% of users say visual UGC is more influential in their decisions than brand-generated photos or videos. There are many brands that have taken on UGC campaigns as a form of crowdsourcing with their consumers. For example, Quay Australia transformed their campaigns by capitalizing on UGC product reviews to increase customer engagement and conversion rates. When visitors go on the brand’s website and specific product pages, they can see how different sunglass styles look on real customers, providing social proof for their browsers. This gives an extra level of visibility in their products and makes their customers not only feel a part of the brand but involved in the purchasing decision. They encourage their shoppers to be empowered and to express themselves by sharing their experiences with #QuayAustralia directly on to their product page, stimulating social engagement and brand awareness within Quay’s community #QuaySquad. This is a great way of building up brand affinity and making your own customers advocates of your brand to their own personal audiences.
Other successful ways brands have benefitted from crowdsourcing is by utilizing the given platform features on social platforms to gain consumer insights on what they like/prefer. Allowing your audience to provide suggestions for your brand can make users feel like they are part of the decision-making in what your brand will do next. You can also gain a lot of knowledge from what your consumers are thinking through social media to implement it onto your brand. One of the greatest examples of this is Oreo’s Daily Twist campaign. Every day for 100 days the Oreo was given a different “twist” — styled to look like Elvis, a panda bear, or the shape of the batman symbol. Oreo promoted the ‘Daily Twist’ site through its social channels where users could suggest their “twist”. Those twists were chosen for the following days of the campaign and were driven on an array of platforms, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Pinterest (Abramovich, 2013).
Oreo utilized relevant pop culture, and milestone events to make users feel like they could relate to the content and express their thoughts. The ‘Daily Twist’ aimed at sparking conversation, and sharing in order to get users involved. Some of the cookie designs were planned especially for certain events like the Olympics or Labor Day, others were more at the moment, tapping into events like the premiere of ‘Batman: The Dark Knight Rises’, the release of the iPhone5, and the birth of a Chinese panda bear. The brand did an incredible job of monitoring trending topics and utilizing current events to ensure that the content stayed relevant and timely while also keeping the surprise factor of what each day would bring.
The most crowdsourced component of this campaign was the way Oreo handled the finale of it by setting up a pop-up agency in the heart of Times Square. There they designed the last ‘Daily Twist’, based on suggestions from fans by asking its Twitter followers and Facebook fans to offer ideas. these ideas went live on a billboard as creatives selected the best ones, putting three of them to an online vote. The winning cookie, celebrating the anniversary of the first high five, was designed on the spot and was displayed on a big billboard. Oreo’s had an innate ability to put their product at the center of the campaign without making it too in your face and creating relatable content that engaged users all over social media and involved them in the process. The utilized heavily branded content and remained relevant, timely, and shareable and saw nothing but organic success.
From these brand examples, you can see that crowdsourcing can be extremely beneficial for any brand if done correctly. Your audience base on social media holds great power in helping your brand grow by creating content, sharing insights, and getting indirectly involved in brand decisions. You can turn consumers into brand advocates by getting them involved and engaged (Spiegel, 2011). It can be the driving force of any social media campaign and a factor that helps your brand stand out amongst competitors.
Sources:
Abramovich, G. (2013, March 07). 5 Brands Winning at Crowdsourcing. Retrieved October 10, 2020, from https://digiday.com/marketing/5-brands-winning-at-crowdsourcing/
Bratvold, D. (2014, April 01). 5 Ways Crowdsourcing Improves Your Content Marketing. Retrieved October 10, 2020, from https://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/5-ways-crowdsourcing-improves-your-content-marketing/
Fournier, A. (2019, October 25). 6 Advantages of Crowdsourcing (and how to benefit from it). Braineet. https://www.braineet.com/blog/crowdsourcing-benefits/.
Spiegel, R. (2011, June 10). 3 Ways to Benefit From Social Media Crowdsourcing. https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/3-ways-to-do-social-media-crowdsourcing/.