 Good morning. Today I'm going to discuss the power of user-generated content and how it can transform the way you do business. My name is Shella Price. I'm a content marketer. I create and promote content mainly for B2B tech industries or companies. You can find my work on Entrepreneurial.com, on the iPo. I've also worked with clients such as Session Cam and Kiss Metrics. So today I want to really hone on the importance of content and how it can impact the way you do business and also your clients. So what's happening? For all we know, for as long as we know, content has been transforming the way we do business at its core. But right now content is disrupting the traditional marketing standards. And why? Consumers have control now. Decades ago, advertisers told us what we wanted. They honed the message. Media corporations controlled radio and television. But now the consumer decides when, where, and how they want to consume the content. It doesn't matter that you have an ad. I don't have to read it. It doesn't matter if I want to, I see your promo. I can just click out of it and move on. So now brands must, they must tell great stories that can excite the user base, get people talking about their product. So that's where UGC steps in. So what is UGC? User-generated content is any form of content produced by your consumer. That's that blog post they write about your services. That's that tweet to their friends saying, oh, how cool I, I had this experience at a spa. It's that buying clip, they say they produce and post and get people riled up and excited about your product. So it can be that even that Amazon review, good or bad, that's user-generated content. So here's an example from GoPro. They said, hey, you have GoPro's. You have this video footage. Give it to us. Submit your footage and we'll post it. And they had a video of a, of the day. So they would get all this content, pick, go, pick through it. And they decided we'll have, we'll pick one and post it up. Just by doing that, they tripled their YouTube views, tripled. And with social growth of this UGC, they increased their revenue. In 2011, they went from $230 million to 2013 to $980 million. That's a big gap, just using other people's content and went so well. Now they're giving their users, their customers, up to $5 million just to submit. Now you can go on, go get a GoPro, go online, submit your footage and get a piece of that pie. They're giving back. That's how great GoPro is and how great user-generated content is. So here are the benefits. Valuable feedback. So you're getting all this content. People are talking about you. So you can sift through the content as market research and decide, hey, maybe they don't like that feature in my product. Maybe they don't like, they don't see that as a benefit. You can really customize the overall experience for the user by just what they're saying from this content. Also, brand advocacy. If you know Beyonce, she has her beehives and they are crazy when someone attacks her. You want that type of brand advocacy in your brand so that people are talking about you so they can come to your defense if something goes wrong. And also people love referrals, right? People, we like to learn about our products from other people. So that can help, that can help build your business in revenue just by getting referrals from brand advocacy. And also cost savings. We all want to save here and there. That's important. But if you have user-generated content, you don't have to necessarily build, hire somebody that content career like myself. You don't have to necessarily hire me to write the content because you're getting it from your customers. And that's what Comcast did. They saved millions of dollars by producing a community forum where customers could ask questions about their products and other customers would answer. They diverted calls from their call center. They hired less people at their call center now and they saved millions that way. So you have the cost savings. You have the brand advocacy and you also have the valuable feedback. But of course, there's some challenges with user-generated content. That's what I call the legal stuff. So when you give a piece of content, don't think you just can use it. Make sure you talk to an attorney and have a contract with the individual so that you can use that information freely. And two, don't use user-generated content if your brand really just sucks. And this happens. And that happens. For example, with McDonald's, when they had hashtag Mickey D stories, people went crazy. They saw so many stories that were negative. It was a bad campaign. Just didn't work for them. So here are the benefits. But think about the challenges and what you need to adjust in your own brand. Here is a great example by Coca-Cola. If you had heard of it, the hashtag share a Coke campaign. Well, they personalized each Coke with a customer's name. So you had the carers, you had the killer, you had the Tommy and Jamal. But one big thing was they told you to share a Coke. They didn't say buy a Coke for yourself. They told you give it to somebody else. So they wanted to build that customer engagement, that sentiment of positivity. So when you're sharing a Coke, you're giving somebody a gift, a real, like it was $100 million. I'm sharing a Coke. So you want to do that with your brain as well. And even this person saying, growing up with my name, hardly anyone ever says it right. And by the grace of God, I found it on a share a Coke box. Like that's a sentiment that you want. She probably look at Pepsi and like, whatever, I got a Coke. So what about your campaign? We're talking about Trump and Clinton. What about your campaign planning for this 2016? So if you're going to start a UGC, set goals with KPIs. Is it for brand awareness? Is it to increase revenue? Is it to just get public relations, attention? So you set some metrics, know what you want as an end goal so you can evaluate it at the end. Decide on a platform and content. We have Twitter, you have Instagram, you have Snapchat now. We have Snapchat. If some people are new, what about Anchor? That's a new audio platform, Anchor. So decide on a platform based on the customer. What's not going to be easy for you, based on the customer and also the content. So what do you want them to share? A blog post, a tweet, a video clip, or audio clip. Decide on what the campaign is really going to be about and make it easy for them and give them multiple options. Some people might want to write, some people might want to talk. So just give them the option to give you that content easier. Promote heavily. You can have those goals. You can have that platform, that content. But if you're not promoting and no one knows about it, it's all for nothing. Promote heavily. So for example, if you have a Twitter campaign, promote on Twitter, but also promote on your Instagram account, your Snapchat account. And just get the get the buzz going and bring them to Twitter if that's what you want them to do. Also your email list. It's time to hit people up on there. Get people involved on your email list. Also reach out to make sure you have it on your website. People don't do that. Post it on your website that you have a campaign that's going on in Twitter. And also reach out to influencers and partnerships that you have so that you're getting people really riled up about this campaign so that you can get the information you need to move your business forward. Key performance indicator. So you that's the metric you want to use. I don't know who I'm talking to. So that so if you want to track revenue, that's the number of sales. The KPI would be that. So best practices. If you are asking for content, don't just wait around and waiting for people to post. Good thing is to start engaging with customers. So if you're on Twitter and you have your campaign, oh, hey, how are you doing? Oh, nice picture. Start responding to people. Get them involved. Also, if you want to really get people involved in other ways to give money, just like GoPro might not necessarily be money made in services. Maybe you can contact your partnerships. Also create a really great hashtag like Coca Cola. So we did this. They have the save a lunch break campaign. So every time you think about going to lunch, you're supposed to think about going to subway. So they have just create a sense of a sense of a brand lifestyle. What you want people to think about when they're throughout their day. Just like the commercial with the I think it's Geico when the hump day. You think of Wednesdays. You want people to be triggered by a certain behavior that's happening throughout their day when they think of your brand. And that's what you should do with your UGC to get people riled up. So if you have any questions about UGC, about content marketing in general, please reach out to me on Twitter. I'm always there answering questions and getting people involved and what content marketing has to give to the audience. Thank you.