When you’re working in a small team, you become a jack-of-all-trades wearing multiple hats at once. With all the multitasking, it’s hard to focus as much time and energy on certain aspects of your job. At work, I’m constantly trying to find a balance between concentrating my efforts on marketing and running all of our day-to-day operations.
This is where I have found the true power behind a user-generated social media marketing campaign. When we launched the 99dresses iOS app last October, we simultaneously launched a #GetYourSwapOn campaign on Instagram.
The concept is simple: Post a selfie of yourself wearing something you have won or planning to give away on the app, and tag @99dresses and #GetYouSwapOn for a +25 karma boost (In our app, karma is something that helps increase the user’s chances of winning our most popular items).
Originally, we viewed this campaign as a fun way for users to help spread the word about 99dresses as well as build a sense of community. Little did I know this campaign would help me in the long run in terms of producing content that I could disseminate across all our channels.
Since we launched our #GetYourSwapOn campaign last fall, over 350 photos have been uploaded with an estimated reach of 18,000+. Last month alone, our follower numbers increased nearly 62%. For an early stage startup, this was an incredible reach for us without spending any money.
Here are a few questions to ask before launching your own user-generated campaign:
- What are you looking to gain from this? Before launching any campaign or initiative, it’s extremely important to be clear about your goals. Closely monitor the results of your efforts and make sure the campaign is helping you achieve them.
- What value can you provide to participating users? Launching a user-generated campaign is often times easier said than done because you have to provide people with an incentive to contribute. For us, it was simple because we knew our target audience would include some of our most active users. For your company, it might be offering a special discount, entering them in a larger giveaway, or giving them exclusive access to a new feature.
- How will you promote this campaign? Another important factor to consider is how you plan on marketing this. We promoted our campaign a few ways: social media channels, traditional email marketing, as well as our drip email campaign. We also benefitted from word-of-mouth marketing since our users have grown to love this promotion.
A user-generated campaign definitely takes time to build momentum, but if you promote the campaign well and offer an incentive for your customers to participate, the payoff is truly worth it in the end!