“To infinity, and beyond!” This is where UGC takes your brand. To the land of infinite possibilities. “Why?” you may ask yourself. Well, let’s break it down. UGC is created constantly. Every minute of every day. According to Statista, about 500 hours of content was uploaded every day during the month in February of 2022. That’s not just a lot of content… that is a staggering, I can’t even wrap my head around it, amount of content. We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again. We could work on the same project twice and find completely new content for the same specific brief within months of each other.
Splitting Sides with UGC
They say laughter is good for the soul and humor is making a comeback in the advertising world right now. I mean, who can blame brands? This type of advertising works for a plethora of reasons. The Journal of Marketing found that “humor is more likely to enhance recall, evaluation, and purchase intention when the humorous message coincides with ad objectives, is well integrated with those objectives, and is viewed as appropriate for the product category.” People love humor. They remember it. 90% more to be exact, according to Oracle. They also connect with it… and they connect with user-generated content more than paid advertising. So, why not put these two together to give yourself a recipe for advertising success? Our recent agency partners at Erich & Kallman did just this with their UGC campaign for Impossible Foods.
AI User Generated Content
UGC is best known for its ability to humanize brands, strengthen consumer trust, and produce lasting emotional connections. With the rise of generative AI recently, there is now talk of AI-generated content. This is any form of UGC that is created or enhanced by artificial intelligence. It can change existing UGC or create new content from scratch. We feel that there are so many things that can go wrong here. Does it not take away the entire point of what benefits UGC has to offer in the first place? People trust real people… How can you “humanize” your brand if you’re not even using humans?
Time to Get Fresh: Tips on Giving Your Brand a Refresh
Coming up with your brand image takes a lot of thought effort and time as we’re sure you know since you did that when you started your company. However, a brand refresh can be just the thing you need to spice up your business if you’ve fallen stagnant instead of a full overhaul. A good refresh is sometimes necessary if your brand has become a little outdated and we all know that keeping up with pop culture in this day in age is crucial to success. This can be anything from a new logo to new a color scheme but no matter what you do there are a couple of elements that a successful brand refresh.
Content Syndication 101
Go big or go home as they say. Content syndication helps your brand increase its reach to a larger audience and isn’t this the goal of every brand to expand and grow? So, what is content syndication exactly? It’s republishing the same piece of content to one or more different sites. Here’s how it works. Your brand creates original content, such as a UGC commercial on your website. Then, you target other websites and/or platforms that are a good fit for this content as well. You approach them with the opportunity to republish your content on their site. If they agree, then they repost with a source that links back to your website. Now, anyone who visits their site will see your content as well. Distribution networks work with large brands with each content syndication vendor. This means that the pricing structures will vary slightly between them. You can go this route or you can search yourself for particular partners that match your brand. According to HubSpot, you can Google Search for articles that mention: “originally published in,” “republished with permission,” or “originally appeared on.” This way is a bit more time-consuming but good if you’re marketing on a tight budget.
Why Asking Open-Ended Questions is Important for Creative Businesses
How? Why? What? Open-ended questions are questions that start this way. They are designed to be thought-provoking and allow for longer and more detailed responses. Differing from closed-ended questions that typically are answered with yes or no or have some short response, they have no predetermined answers and will require some explanation. A good open-ended question always seeks genuine interest in the person’s answers. Since these types of questions require deeper thinking they can often end with breakthrough answers. The point is not about having a right or wrong answer with these so that they can elicit collaboration within a team. You can already see why this type of thought provocation within your business can be beneficial, especially when you’re trying to solve some problem. They can build rapport between employees and foster positive relationships within the company. If you’re not sure where to start with asking open-ended questions here are some tips and examples.
Using Grateful Practices to Expand Your Business
Every morning I sit and journal for 20 minutes to unload my mind and declutter my thoughts. If you’ve ever read The 5 am Club by Robin Sharma, then you know what this 20/20/20 rule is all about. I digress though. If you want to know what it’s about you’ll have to read the book. Wink Wink. Once I’m done with this journaling practice, I write down 5 things I am grateful for that day. It can be as complicated as, “I am grateful for the ability to shift my focus to things I can control when I am burdened with situations that are out of my control.” Or they can be as simple as. “I am grateful that I woke up today or for the roof over my head.”
Theory of Reasoned Action
We recently listened to a great episode of the Mark Groves podcast with costar guest, Robert Greene on the art of seduction. By seduction, we don’t mean what you all think. Seduction is persuasion and is an element of gaining power. This is something all brands strive to attain to gain new customers. All advertising is based on some sort of persuasion to influence attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. This is where the Theory of Reasoned Action comes into play. This theory is an attempt to understand the relationship between attitudes, and beliefs and determine behavioral intention of human actions. There are three things to consider here. 1. Attitudes as a function of beliefs and evaluations of the outcomes. 2. Subjective norms of society as a function of normative beliefs. 3. Motivation to comply and self-control is a function of these beliefs with consideration to how much sway they hold over the person. These three things lead to behavioral intentions. So, now it’s important to understand what controls these beliefs that we all have and where they stem from. Some background factors are personal, demographic, and environmental.
