@rebecca.taylor and @hannah.jean  - do either of you have any experiences with this to share? :)

I manage the social media presence for a large veterinary brand, and we have found success with using UGC from our clients, as both the success stories and the cautionary tales that come from their shared content are often top performers on our pages.

As we are dealing with pets vs. the human clients you would be sharing UGC from in human medicine, I can definitely see the added difficulties you would run into. To ensure our clients’ privacy, we always have a client confirm in writing that we can share the information they posted, and then we make sure not to divulge any additional information about their pet’s case that they have not approved in advance.

Hi brandais,

Not necessarily business marketing, but I work in higher ed marketing and UGC is a massive part of our strategy, despite it sometimes being tough to get quality UGC. Some of the best successes can come purely organically by asking your followers directly. I recently prompted our followers to send their best campus sunset photos to us and upon posting them we received the most reach & engagement on Facebook that we’ve seen all year. Of course, be sure to credit the UGC creators, which helps build their connection and encourage others to participate. Other successes can come from offering incentives. We’ve done giveaways of cool branded swag items that yielded positive results for UGC as well, so sometimes it can come naturally if you create the right circumstances and leverage the results the right way, while other times you may have to be more directly involved in your approach to generating UGC. 

Just some thoughts, hope they help! Definitely encourage y’all to try getting some UGC into your content mix.

Miles

Hey Brandais! 

I was previously the communications manager for a blood platelet donation company! 

We did some BIG pushes for UGC and more organic looking content and it really paid off! A lot of people on social media are tired of seeing stuffy-company content and are massively distrusting of medical organizations. With a more organic feel to our content, and re-sharing UGC from other users, it made our content and our brand overall more trustworthy and our leads shot through the roof!