Do you know the best practices for displaying User Generated Content from Instagram & Twitter on your website?
User generated content is always a valuable asset for your brand to highlight your fans’ excitement of your brand in an authentic way. Whether you’re designing a new site or giving your current site a facelift, consider leveraging UGC to increase your community’s sharing and give your fans that added bonus of engagement. But when you’re learning how to use UGC on your site you need to make sure you’re following Instagram & Twitter’s display guidelines appropriately. When leveraging the SEEN Campaigns platform you can ensure you’re always within these guidelines and for those of you building your own displays, we’ll outline the best tactics for UGC display with some inspiring real examples of UGC in practice.
Visual marketing is continuing to grow as visual content from social networks like Instagram, Pinterest, and Tumblr take over the web. The most valuable and effective visual content is created and shared by your users so highlighting it on your website in captivating displays can provide incredible returns to your marketing efforts.
Benefits of UGC
Increase your community’s sharing
When your community is sharing content about your brand you’re gaining a visual endorsement from those passionate fans. They’re promoting your brand to their followers so promote their actions by sharing this content on your site. By displaying that content on your site you can validate this content sharing promoting your brand and further encourage more sharing from your community.
Get your fans excited
The increased sharing that’s seen from highlighting your community’s content comes from their excitement of being featured on your site. By featuring their visual content you can build a more passionate fan base of people who are going out of their way to market your brand to their followers. This is a fantastic way to build customer engagement. The excitement that your fans see will be measurable in the increased sharing and engagement with your brand on Instagram. You’ll feel you’ve accomplished your work with each post that’s shared showing someone’s excitement of being featured on your site.
Highlight your brand authentically
Authenticity is always strived for in marketing and that’s exactly what’s gained from the content your community shares is invaluable for your marketing efforts. Consumers find posts from their friends to be more engaging than branded posts and highlighting these posts properly on your website helps to endorse this true view of your brand.
Social Display Guidelines
If you’re building a display to highlight content from Instagram it’s important to follow Instagram’s display guidelines. The main details to remember are to provide full attribution to the Instagrammer who shared the post while not modifying or confusing the content shared from Instagram.
As with Instagram, Twitter’s display guidelines make it clear that when displaying content from Twitter online it’s important to provide full attribution to the user as well as make it clear that the content is coming from Twitter. In every tweet you’re displaying you need to include all of the entities that make up that tweet. Details like the Tweet Author Name, Tweet Author @username, Tweet Author Avatar, Tweet Timestamp, Tweet Text, Tweet Actions and Twitter Branding are all aspects that distinguish that tweet so they need to be included.
Best Practices
Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau – Increased Sharing
The Pocono Mountains Visitors Bureau promotes the #TakeOnPocono campaign to encourage their community to share their ‘Take On’ the Pocono Mountains. The content from this Instagram campaign has given PMVB the ability to showcase their destination from their visitors’ perspective in a more authentic way. By using the UGC from the campaign as the visual assets on their site, they’re further promoting the campaign and encouraging their fans to share more content on Instagram.
University of South Carolina – Fan Excitement
The excitement your community has when they’re showcased on your site is apparent with the University of South Carolina and their #UofSCyes social media campaign. Students who receive their acceptance letter from UofSC are encouraged to share a photo of them with the letter on Instagram or Twitter and the university is sharing that content on the school’s homepage. And the new class of ’18 couldn’t be more thrilled about being #Instafamous
The @UofSC home page makes me so happy! Get ready for a GREAT four(ish) years! #UofSCYES pic.twitter.com/QmDmFOiVnK
— Gabriela Santos (@gabeeeezy) December 4, 2014
Empire State Building – Authentic Perspectives
The Empire State Building is one of the most iconic structures in the New York City skyline with one of the best views of the city. But rather than just tell you that, the Empire State team has built the Share ESB site to show the skyscraper and the views in an authentic light from their community’s perspective. Highlighting this content from their fans gives them the ability to not only tell you how great their experience is but actually show you with endorsements from their community.
By showcasing your community’s content on your site you can increase this sharing and grow your authentic promotion with fan excitement. This is a best practice to follow and should be done within Instagram and Twitter’s guidelines.
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