UGC 101
Newsletter #141
This Week
U-G-What?
Update: Xbox’s Asha Sharma Has Been Listening
Spotted
Before We Go…
1. What is UGC? And Why Should Communicators Care?
You’ve probably seen it without realizing there’s a name for it.
A restaurant review. An unboxing video. Someone showing off their favorite yarn. A hotel room tour. A Google review. A customer posting about a product they love.
It’s called user generated content, or UGC.
Semrush defines UGC as “non-sponsored content related to a brand that’s created by users — like customers or employees — rather than the brand itself.”
In other words: It’s content about your organization, product, or service that you didn’t create yourself and didn’t pay for.
And if you spend any time on social media, you’ll see it everywhere. One creator, for example, recently posted a review of yarn she used to knit a sweater, a full year after she made it. Another creator shared a look inside her Denver hotel stay.
Here are examples of UGC in action and ideas for how to inspire others to get creating for your brand.
2. Update: Analyzing the Xbox CEO’s Latest Announcement
Last week, we shared a story about how new Xbox CEO Asha Sharma rolled out an announcement that won her some new fans in the gaming world by making progress on a growing problem in the industry: obsolescence of physical media.
We’re resharing the story because Sharma made headlines again this week. Turns out, if you recently submitted an Xbox support ticket, it may have been answered by Sharma herself. She’s been spending the past several months quietly responding to customer support tickets to better understand players and their pain points. Talk about primary research!
3. Spotted
We loved this post from Jonathan Horner on LinkedIn. Horner sent 130 breweries a request for stickers. He received a 33% direct mail response rate. Some of those businesses went to great lengths to ensure those stickers made their way to him.
4. Before We Go…
“Over the past few years, BBM has pioneered a remarkably cynical business model. First it buys online publications that have established themselves as offering a distinctive type of journalism, like coverage of space travel, parenting advice, or business news. Then it floods their websites with dizzying torrents of AI-generated content — many thousands of articles per month, by our count — in a bid to soak up as many readers as possible via Google and other platforms.”
From Axios Communicators: Everyone wants an index
Owning a source of proprietary data that others come to year after year can be a powerful communications tool, establishing your organization as a source of expertise and trust. Here’s how to do it and do it well.
From The New York Times: CNN, Politico and MS NOW reporters barred from White House
“President Trump announced a ban on Friday on the outlets, whose coverage he deems unfair. The move will probably be challenged in court.”