If you’ve been to live events, you know the energy and excitement can be contagious.
Whether you’re part of the crowd at an intimate concert, the audience listening to a respected speaker at a conference, or the fans cheering wildly at a late-season game, the experience of being at an event in person is special, and it’s a big reason people may go out of their way to visit certain destinations.
CrowdRiff allows destination marketers to capture and leverage that in-the-moment magic of a live event, and extend it further. With features that help marketers deliver more memorable experiences (both during and after an event), CrowdRiff helps both DMOs and their guests make the most out of events.
How marketers use CrowdRiff during live events
Imagine if you could easily capture, curate, and share attendee experiences in real-time. You’d be able to maximize every unique moment, and elevate the atmosphere of your live event.
For marketers using CrowdRiff, it’s entirely possible (and surprisingly effortless). There are two main features perfect for live events:
1 | CrowdRiff Photo Wall
The first is by creating live digital displays of UGC using CrowdRiff’s Photo Wall feature. This gives you the power to automatically populate large screens with the photos event attendees are taking and sharing in real-time.
Simply choose the hashtag you want to feature and your Photo Wall will display a rotating collage of live UGC from the event. It automatically refreshes every few seconds (or however often you want it to) and features your hashtag in the corner too.
So at the next party or gala held at your destination, add to the atmosphere and create a memorable experience by featuring your guests’ latest snaps and selfies at your event, right as they post them.
Just like the Photo Wall feature, your slideshow will display your hashtag, along with custom branding, so attendees know exactly how to tag their images — but instead of a collage of photos, it spotlights one image at a time.
One of the great things about the slideshow feature is that you curate the images yourself from within CrowdRiff, so you control the content that is shown. You can also insert promotional photos, such as “Follow us on Instagram @YourBrand!” for example.
Adding new images takes almost no time at all. This is critical because things can change quickly at a live event — your content needs to be able to keep up! With just the click of a button in CrowdRiff, your slideshow is automatically updated in seconds.
Benefits of leveraging CrowdRiff’s visual displays:
Both the live Photo Wall and CrowdRiff Slideshows encourage visitors to capture and share their experiences in the moment — rather than saving their photos to view at home (and then forget about them) or post a few days later (when they’re less relevant).
UGC also generates social chatter around the event — which even people who aren’t in attendance will get to see online.
Showing the photos and experiences people are sharing in the moment also builds the atmosphere of that event. You foster a sense of connection that only comes from sharing those exciting live experiences. Catching a glimpse of what other attendees are doing and photographing allows your guests to feel like part of something bigger.
With display screens strategically placed all over your event venue, these visitor experiences add a decorative and personal touch to the event.
How CrowdRiff helps you recapture the magic of an event, after it happens
Once a live event is over, CrowdRiff can easily show you all the photos and videos that were taken and shared during that event with a simple search, so that all this imagery is ready for you to then act on.
With a treasure trove of visual content from that event, you can extend the live experience by allowing guests to re-live event highlights and memories.
Transform your best visuals of the night into a beautiful website gallery (within seconds) — perfect to feature in a blog post recapping the night.
Share your favorite event photos to social media, directly from the platform.
Curate these photos into a custom album for that event, so when next year rolls around you’ll have a stockpile of relevant visuals to promote it. Bonus: All albums in CrowdRiff can easily be shared with third-parties and people outside your organization (like journalists or other media).
With CrowdRiff, your live events are about to get livelier
Displaying CrowdRiff Slideshows and Photo Walls around your venue helps create more memorable, engaging experiences at live events. Not only can you encourage visitors to share photos with your hashtag right then and there (which means more UGC to choose from during the event), but it also results in more content for you to work with long after the event is over.
Event marketing can be a breeze when you have the right tools. Ready to see for yourself how CrowdRiff takes live events to the next level? Schedule your demo today!
Interested in how other CrowdRiff customers use the platform? Watch this recorded webinar:
In a world of travelers who rely on visuals to decide where to go and what to see, experience and buy, you need a platform that learns and evolves based on audience perception and performance.
Our new smart platform is a benchmark in tourism marketing, building on the insights we’ve gathered from processing over 500 million images to create a uniquely intelligent visual marketing platform.
It adds rich detail to all the visual assets in your library.
It makes data-driven recommendations while still keeping all your visual content at your fingertips.
It helps you put the most impactful visual content in front of your audience.
1 | The smartest visual curation engine in travel and tourism
Social media is a treasure trove of great visuals for tourism brands. Last year, more than 35 billion photos were posted to Instagram. Let that sink in for a minute – 35 billion photos.
In working with over 250 of the top travel brands in the world, we’ve processed over 500 million images. This data is the foundation of our machine learning model that identifies and surfaces the highest-quality content in your library.
Say goodbye to blurry photos, selfies, text-laden posts and memes – they’ll all be cleared from your stream when you enable our new smart curation.
Simply turn it on and watch the magic happen. The best part? You can turn the filter on and off as you choose, maintaining total control of your library.
2 | The industry’s most intelligent visual search, bar none
Every day, marketers need visuals, whether it’s for a blog post, a new Facebook ad or a promo video.
Your collection of visuals is only as strong as what you can find and put to good use.
We’re already widely recognized as having the industry’s best visual search, and now it’s even better. We’ve expanded our search capabilities to include synonyms, word stemming and multiple languages.
In short, it finds what you want, even if it’s not exactly what you typed.
When you search for friends, we’ll also look for variations of the word, like friends, friendship and friendly. You’re a talented marketer, but you’re probably not clairvoyant. Why should you be expected to nail every search term to the letter?
3 | Image recognition on all your visual assets (you’ll wonder how you lived without it!)
You’ve got thousands of photos and videos coming from all over the place – social media, external hard drives, your teammates’ phones, and more. They’re not always easy to find. (How many files do you have on your phone called something like “IMG_3748.jpg”?)
With CrowdRiff, every photo and every frame of video in your library gets auto-tagged with descriptive keywords, unearthing those buried treasures and putting them back at your fingertips. The added benefit of tagging your video is that you can search by scene content.
4 | Self-optimizing website galleries that automatically display your best visuals
If you had three photos on your “Things to Do” page and learned that one got way more clicks than the other two, what would you do? You’d keep the one that was working and swap out the other two.
CrowdRiff’s new self-optimizing galleries do this for you, using machine learning to display your most impactful visuals on your web pages.
It’s the perfect marriage of brand and performance, something every marketer can get behind.
“CrowdRiff has always brought innovative solutions to us as a partner of Colorado Tourism Office, and we’re already taking advantage of these new intelligent capabilities for both our UGC and owned visuals.”
The only platform purpose-built for the era of visual decision-making
While most travel brands understand the value of visuals in their marketing, sourcing, curating and delivering engaging visuals on a daily basis is easier said than done.
Finding the perfect visuals that meet both brand and performance goals can be a time-consuming and largely manual process. The volume of available visual content has become more than any marketing team can manage without help.
CrowdRiff is purpose-built for the way today’s travelers discover, purchase and share travel experiences.
“We’ve always prided ourselves on being industry leaders, but here we were at the bottom of this list,” said Kate Jorgensen, the Project Manager of Global Integrated Marketing for Travel Oregon.
After five years, it was time for a website refresh
Travel Oregon’s website earlier in 2017
Jorgensen explains that when the destination marketing organization’s website was launched in 2012, only about 15% of visitors were viewing it on a mobile device. “Now it’s over half,” she said. While Travel Oregon was one of the first DMO websites to launch with a fully responsive website, it was not built to serve content optimized for mobile and, over time, really slowed page load time.
“We had a growing technical debt. When we built the website originally it wasn’t optimized to serve content on mobile, and we were working on a pretty outdated, highly customized version of WordPress.”
While technical concerns were the impetus for the redesign of TravelOregon.com, this initiative provided Travel Oregon an opportunity to address several larger projects they had queued up, including incorporating a new brand identity and consolidating microsites into their main website.
“The biggest [of the large projects]was merging Ride Oregon Ride into TravelOregon.com, which was a standalone site that was geared around bicycling tourism in Oregon, and had some unique content needs that we were trying to solve,” said Jorgensen.
The process of redesigning the website also gave Travel Oregon a rare opportunity to reevaluate its role, and consider how to better achieve it using the latest available tools. The editorial objective of Travel Oregon — according to Emily Forsha, the organization’s Content and Community Manager of Global Integrated Marketing — is to “inform and inspire travel to and around the state of Oregon.”
Visual content is integral to Travel Oregon’s refreshed website
“I think we’ve always leaned on the photos to inspire, and we haven’t really thought about how they could inform as well,” said Forsha. “On this new site, especially with user-generated content, it’s also got that ‘inform’ piece as well, like what does it look like in central Oregon right now, for example.”
The new website uses photos and user-generated content powered by CrowdRiff to help inspire travel decisions.
“We can post all the beautiful photos we want, but when you see a gorgeous photo that a real person took, that can certainly instill trust. It’s like you can really have that experience, you can actually go there, and it will actually look like that.”
Jorgensen adds that when it re-launched on September 19th, the website established a new visual language for the destination through its color palette and branding, using subtle visual cues to evoke the state and its culture. For example, the colors are based off of the state’s most prominent natural colors — deep blue for its lakes, dark green for its forests, and gray for its cloudy skies. The dotted lines at the bottom of each page even spell the name of the state in Morse code.
Identifying shortcomings from the old site to inspire new solutions
The redesign effort began with visitor research in the fall of 2015, which directly influenced elements such as site architecture, content groupings, and nomenclature.
“We learned that people wanted us to simplify,” said Jorgensen.“We had 10 or 11 options for navigation, and we learned that people wanted less choices up front, but they’d be willing to click-through so long as they were getting relevant results as they went further into the experience.”
The result of all of these efforts is a fast-loading, mobile-compatible, highly visual and easy-to-use website.
The three options that remain at the very top of each page let users choose between “places to go,” “things to do,” and “plan your trip,” while the remainder of the homepage lets visitors navigate based on location, interest, and mood. The homepage also offers a “surprise me” button that encourages organic discovery of attractions and activities.
Each subcategory, ranging from the “snow sports” activity to the “Oregon Coast” destination to the “silly” emotion is labeled with vibrant, inviting imagery, often collected during unrelated projects.
“Every single time we send a production team anywhere now, we also capture still photography for our media library,” said Forsha.
“When we started doing it last year, we had all these images I didn’t think we would ever use, and we have, which just goes to show you that you should always just capture everything you can, because you’ll be surprised by what you end up using.”
A trap tourism websites fall into is providing laundry lists of options rather than specific recommendations based on location or interest.
“The inclination is to just serve up everything. We’re trying to build trust by leading with the best, and hopefully giving people more context for what they’re actually looking for.”
Accomplishing the goal they set out to reach
Though the redesign is still fresh, it’s already improved a number of key metrics, including a drop in bounce rates and an increase in time on site. Traffic has also seen a spike in recent months, though Jorgensen says that is likely a result of the organization’s winter campaign launch.
The metric that Jorgensen and Forsha are most proud of, however, is the one that inspired the redesign effort in the first place.
“At the start of this project we wanted to optimize our mobile website load time,” said Jorgensen.
“We were at 10 seconds on the old site, and now we’re below five. We’d like to be below four, but that’s still a huge win, especially considering how much media we’re leading with on our site now, so it’s exciting.”
What’s next for TravelOregon.com
With a fully functioning, mobile-optimized website to build on, Travel Oregon has some ambitious future plans. One key priority is supporting multipoint data to enhance digital maps, starting with bicycle routes and eventually expanding beyond.
“We’re really excited about the multipoint map data coming online,” said Jorgensen. “We have some of the best bike rides, and being able to showcase those, the entire trail, and all the great things to see and do around those is going to be really great.”
The team is also excited about its upcoming partnerships with Ski Oregon and Eastern Oregon, which will give the affiliated organizations the ability to leverage the new and improved TravelOregon.com for their own websites. “Eastern Oregon’s own site will become the Eastern Oregon section on our site, and same with Ski Oregon,” explained Jorgensen.
The organization’s long-term goal, said Forsha, is to establish a visitor lifecycle algorithm that can serve content to users based on how far along they are in their travel plans.
“Are you just starting to think about Oregon? Are you planning your trip? Are you ready to book your trip? Or are you already here?” said Forsha.
“Hopefully sometime in the future you’ll go to TravelOregon.com and it will be totally personalized based on that.”
Before introducing a major new tool to your marketing stack, you might wonder: “How can different people on my team use this tool?”
CrowdRiff delivers value for every member of your marketing team — from social media managers and content strategists to digital marketing managers and marketing leaders.
Let’s take a look at how different people in various digital marketing roles use CrowdRiff in their day-to-day work.
“Last year when I was [looking for social media photos] I spent hours and hours just searching online. Being able to use CrowdRiff personally has been a huge help and time saver in letting me search social media, find great photos and automatically get rights requests.”
— Parker Whidby, Digital Content Specialist at Explore Georgia
Easily find user-generated content to repost and share. CrowdRiff takes the game of cat and mouse out of reposting UGC, by making it easy to find and request rights to photos. In CrowdRiff, you can search within hashtags and keywords in order to find the exact image you’d like to post — today.
See content from all your channels in one place. CrowdRiff sources imagery from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter from a variety of hashtags, and usernames, and keywords all in one easy interface.
Easily find and connect with influencers. Any time you search within CrowdRiff, you not only surface the visual content you want, but CrowdRiff also spotlights top contributors who match your search terms. This lets you quickly identify local influencers as well as micro-influencers in just about any niche.
“Making those galleries for the blog with CrowdRiff has been a huge time saver, because before we had to sort through all the Facebook pages of various businesses to find usable shots. Now if I want to write about ’10 Restaurants to Eat At This Summer’ I just look up each restaurant on CrowdRiff and I can easily compile a gallery of nice food shots with user-generated content.”
— Breanne Sewards, Editorial Content Specialist at Travel Manitoba
Effortlessly find images to liven up your blog posts. One of your biggest challenges is finding visuals to complement your written content. With CrowdRiff’s powerful search functionality, you can find the exact image you need, whether it’s from Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, or your owned media in just seconds. So, the next time you’re writing a blog on the best local hikes or up-and-coming neighborhoods, you won’t have to scramble to find relevant visuals.
More effectively show (instead of tell) readers what your brand is all about. Your audience loves visual content because it’s absorbing and easy to digest. Adding images to your content allows you to demonstrate what your destination has to offer, instead of only telling with text. CrowdRiff makes it easy to create galleries of visual UGC (containing as many images as you like!) to break up paragraphs and to say more with less.
Increase audience engagement. When you always have a collection of relevant UGC at your fingertips, you’ll naturally add more visuals to all of your blog content. This means a wider range of imagery for your readers to explore — and a chance for you to capture their attention for longer.
“Instead of having just the one [picture] of the top 10 things to do, we’re able to showcase more of a variety of the top 10 attractions, utilizing CrowdRiff before [the user clicks away].”
— Chad Hays, Sr. Online Marketing Manager at Visit Phoenix
Make your website more effective. Visual UGC can change the way customers interact with your website. On average, CrowdRiff increases time on page by 4X and reduces bounce rate by 30%. For example, Visit Fairfax experienced a 351% increase in time on site when they added a UGC gallery:
Update website visuals with a click of a button. Not only does our platform allow you to surface relevant imagery for every use case, it also helps you to update your visuals in a pinch. Need to quickly refresh the images on your homepage to reflect your new marketing campaign, seasonal changes, or upcoming events? No problem! Simply edit your CrowdRiff gallery and instantly push the update yourself.
Get rights to authentic photos for more effective digital ads. Not only does CrowdRiff make it simple to find photos of your destination, it also helps you get the rights to use social UGC in your marketing. All you need to do is click and choose the photos you’d like rights to and CrowdRiff handles all of the rest. This creates an amazing opportunity to boost engagement, since customers featuring UGC in promotional material have seen increases in click-through rates by 3X.
“CrowdRiff has become integral to our marketing efforts as 90% of our creative with photos/videos is sourced from CrowdRiff. It has helped to drive traffic to our website from social and has helped increase time on site since implemented. Overall, we couldn’t be happier!”
— Taylor Cummings, Director of Marketing, Travel Dubuque
Keep your finger on the pulse of local trends and conversations. CrowdRiff sources all the visuals people are posting on social media and puts it in front of you, so you can see exactly what visitors and locals are excited and talking about. This makes it so simple to stay up-to-date on what’s happening in your destination. As Wes Rhea, CEO of Visit Stockton, puts it:
“You find little nuggets of things that are happening in town, new public art, new murals, new stuff happening…you can have your finger on the pulse of what’s going on.”
Tell a better brand story with authentic imagery. Featuring a variety of user-generated visuals in your marketing puts your locals and visitors front and center, and helps to tell your brand story from multiple perspectives. CrowdRiff makes it easy to embed UGC galleries on your website, as well as get rights to content to use throughout your marketing.
Centralize all of your team’s visual assets. As your all-in-one visual content marketing platform, CrowdRiff brings together the images stored on everyone’s hard drives, Dropbox accounts, and USBs into one searchable hub. Store, organize, and publish your visual content — both UGC and owned — all in one platform.
See how your team can use CrowdRiff today.
CrowdRiff is loved by over 250 marketing teams all over the world, from teams of one to teams of ten. Let us show you how your team can do outstanding visual marketing with CrowdRiff today.
Before Chile’s national tourism service, SERNATUR, set out on its most ambitious video campaign ever, the destination marketing organization was struggling to establish itself as a key South American destination for international travelers.
The marketing material was outdated, failing to showcase the diversity of landscapes and people that truly differentiate the thin coastal country from its neighbors.
“We had to [refresh] all the visual material that we had because it was like five years old,” said Constanza Smok, SERNATUR’s B2C Marketing Manager. “They were more documentary videos, not advertising videos, and we wanted to cover the destination in ways that wasn’t in those videos at all.”
Finding a way to capture the best of Chile in a major video campaign
Chile is home to the continent’s southern-most point, but also neighbors Peru in the north; they are bordered by mountains on east, and the ocean on the west. Because of the country’s unique geography, Chile is home to a wide variety of cultures, peoples and landscapes. It’s one of the only countries in the world where you can wander a desert in the morning, ski in the afternoon, and spend the night in a major metropolis.
Capturing all of those unique elements in a single marketing campaign posed a huge challenge, but was also the best way for the country to differentiate itself from the rest of the continent.
“Here in South America, you have so many natural attractions that it’s always a challenge to find the specific one that Chile has to show,” said Magdalena Ramirez, SERNATUR’s Branding Manager.
“It’s difficult to tell the entire world to come to Chile, because you’re talking to millions and millions of people, and you need to make some sort of emotional connection with each one of them.”
The “Find Your Chile” video campaign
To capture that diversity while making an emotional connection with viewers, SERNATUR set out on its most ambitious video project ever.
Production began on the “Find Your Chile” campaign last April, featuring one flagship video supported by 27 additional videos that hone in on the specific activities, attractions, and landscapes that are “waiting for you.”
All 28 videos have been cut into 30-second and two-and-a-half-minute versions, and have been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, English, German and Italian.
“In just one campaign, we wanted to show that you can find yourself alone in the middle of the desert with the stars waiting for you, and within a few hours you can be in Patagonia in an untouched landscape,” said Ramirez.
Incorporating real travelers into the videos on the fly
While the videos are filled with shots of the natural landscape, they’re anchored by interviews with real travelers and played over a traditional Chilean soundtrack remixed into a more modern style.
“‘Find Your Chile’ also had only [international] tourists talking about their experience, because we wanted their testimonial about what Chile is like,” said Ramirez.
Rather than recruit tourists to speak in the videos, however, SERNATUR just showed up to some of the country’s biggest attractions with a camera crew and asked to interview the people they found on location. “It was spontaneous, and that’s, I think, the main attraction of the video: all the testimonials are real,” said Ramirez.
“It wasn’t difficult to find people willing to talk and be part of this project because most of them were delighted with the landscape, nature and the experience of being there,” adds Smok.
“People feel the emotion that the travelers are experiencing in that moment. It’s very honest and direct, and that’s a key factor for people who are making decisions regarding where to go on their next trip.”
The campaign was ambitious, but ultimately proved successful
“Find Your Chile” was awarded top honors at the United Nation’s World Tourism Organizations’ annual video competition for the Americas.
Great News! Our "Find Your Chile" video won first place in the Americas Tourism Video Competition 2017 @UNWTOpic.twitter.com/9CtiTF4llr
“We also won in the category of best promotional campaign in a Portuguese international film and tourism competition in Portugal in the first week of November,” said Smok.
The English language version of the flagship “Chile Is Waiting for You” video alone has accumulated over a quarter-million views.
Learning from this success to build an even bigger video campaign
With the success of the “Find Your Chile” campaign, the destination marketing organization is once again setting out to produce a very ambitious video project, producing another 50 videos for the coming travel season.
“They will go under the ‘Open Nature brand,’ which is our main brand right now for international promotion: ‘Chile Open Nature,’” said Smok, adding that unlike the previous campaign, the latest batch are being filmed in the Chilean summertime.
The new campaign also integrates the stories of local experts alongside the visitor testimonials that were so popular in the previous campaign. For example, one of the videos will feature a festival in the northern part of the country, profiling both a dancer that’s spent months learning traditional dances for the event, as well as visitors taking it all in from the crowd.
“This is the goal of our communications,” said Smok. “We started with the basics, and now we’re evolving, because we have more learning, more time and more budget, and now we have a place to start working on it from.”
With such a deep archive of award-winning videos honing in on uniquely Chilean experiences, it’s unlikely that would-be visitors will struggle to differentiate the country from its neighbors anytime soon.
These days, marketers everywhere are finding they need more and more visual content for their marketing.
But as a destination marketer, getting all the visual content you need can be a challenge. Your budget for professional photography often isn’t enough to keep up with the volume of content needed for all your marketing channels. And the variety of experiences in your destination are too numerous to capture by a single photographer or videographer.
With that in mind, we’ve been able to help over 250 DMOs make the most of their photography spend — keeping a budget for professional and stock images, yet finding ways to extend the rest.
Read on to see 4 ways CrowdRiff gets you more bang for your photography buck:
1 | Getting rights-approved social photos at scale to beef up your visual content library
User-generated visuals are a budget-friendly source of visual content for your brand, and CrowdRiff makes it easy for you to tap into them.
When it comes to images captured by locals and travelers, these photographers are fans of your destination. So since they already love your brand, as long as you ask nicely, people are usually happy to give you rights their photos to use in your marketing!
But the challenge is this: Commenting on every single photo that you’d like rights to takes time. Then, you’d have to track requests and responses somewhere, plus email back and forth for the photo.
CrowdRiff, however, automates much of that manual process. This means that for the time it takes to request one photo, you could request tens or hundreds, and build up a huge library of user-generated visuals to use in your marketing.
For example, boat tour attraction Hornblower Niagara Cruises received rights to more than 2,000 social photos within one week of first using CrowdRiff. Since then, their library of rights-approved UGC has grown to house more than 16,000 images.
How this works
Within the platform, you can choose your favorites from the content coming in every day, and with a click of a button, request rights to all of them.
CrowdRiff keeps track of which photos you’ve requested rights to, which are pending, and which have been approved — and we take a screenshot of the response for extra security. Approved content automatically appears in a dedicated section, so you don’t have to keep going back to Instagram and checking — you can just start using them!
Bonus fact: When you download a photo, CrowdRiff retrieves the high-resolution version of it for you.
2 | Updating website visuals easily and often
Modern travelers want current information about the places they’re planning to visit. So, as a DMO, you strive to keep the images on your website as recent as possible. But often, there simply isn’t room in the budget to get entirely new website visuals every month.
With CrowdRiff, however, you have the ability to change up your website visuals with new content not just every month, but every day if you wanted to.
CrowdRiff galleries are dynamic. By embedding them on your website, not only is it quick and easy to add or swap out visuals in your gallery (it can take as little as 5 minutes), but there’s always an abundance of new content to choose from.
How this works
People snap and share new photos of your destination every day, and CrowdRiff sources this all into your library.
That means you always have access to fresh, current, and relevant imagery directly, which you can push live without leaving the platform.
Whether you’re looking for owned or UGC visuals, you can quickly update any CrowdRiff gallery with a few simple clicks – no need to dive into any code or wait on a developer.
3 | Making it easy to find what you need from your existing library
How many times have you purchased a stock photo, only to realize that you already own a very similar image?
When you have hundreds (or thousands!) of visuals in your media library, it’s only too easy to lose track of the content that’s already available to you.
However, with an industry-leading image search, CrowdRiff ensures that all the content you already have is always at your fingertips.
How this works
With CrowdRiff’s Google Vision keywording and intelligent image search, there’s no need to remember obscure image file names. Every photo and video you upload gets crawled and auto-tagged with relevant keywords, using the industry’s leading artificial intelligence technology.
That means when you need to find a certain photo, even if you can’t recall something specific, you can simply search for whatever you want to find, and CrowdRiff will sort through your library and show you all the content that matches – both owned and UGC.
So, rather than buying the same kind of photos over and over, you can quickly and conveniently surface forgotten content whenever you need it.
4 | Accessing hard-to-find visuals
Some visuals are harder to get than others. Think about it:
Maybe you already own a ton of photography featuring, say, twenty-somethings – but your destination probably appeals to people of other age groups too, that your current library doesn’t represent.
Or perhaps you have an abundance of food photos from your most popular restaurants, but want imagery for a dozen of your smaller local gems.
It isn’t always possible to source all this specific content and stay within budget — but with CrowdRiff, it’s easy to find the imagery you need to fill the gaps.
For example, prior to becoming a CrowdRiff customer, Lauren Joseph of Hammock Coast struggled to find enough imagery that reflected the diversity of her destination’s travelers and locals. Now that she’s got CrowdRiff on her side, Lauren can easily find and curate photos from actual visitors and feature a wider range of people — old and young, and of different ethnicities — on her website.
Wedding photography was another type of photography she wanted more of, but was never able to fit into her budget.
“We have beautiful wedding venues – and wedding photography can get expensive. But if you go to my weddings page we just have a plethora of beautiful user-generated wedding photography.”
Because CrowdRiff gives you access to all the photos being shared in your destination, which are taken by thousands of different people in your destination, you have a greater variety of visuals to choose from. No matter how niche it is, someone in your destination (likely many, in fact) has shared an image of it.
CrowdRiff makes it easy to supplement your owned photography by tapping into UGC to fill in areas that are underrepresented.
CrowdRiff helps you expand your visual library without expanding your budget
CrowdRiff gives you access to the thousands of social media visuals that exist around your destination. And better access to the visuals you already own.
When it comes to visual marketing, leveraging CrowdRiff helps you do more with the visual content you have, and extend your visual library with authentic, affordable content.
So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with our team today to get a product tour!
I read a lot of blog posts about how to say no to customers and cautioning not to build what customers ask for, but not a lot about how important saying yes is.
But saying yes was an important part of how we built CrowdRiff.
Today, customers including Princess Cruises, Lonely Planet and Tourism Colorado use CrowdRiff to power the visuals that tell better stories. We have developed a solution that combines image discovery, digital asset management and seamless content delivery into an AI-powered content platform for marketers. But our journey wasn’t a straight line.
Early in our growth, my co-founder, Abhinav Ajgaonkar, and I pivoted the product multiple times, and also tried different SaaS models, from small monthly payments to large enterprise contracts. A lot changed during those early years, but we’ve always worked closely with our customers, and saying yes to their ideas proved to be pivotal in CrowdRiff’s growth.
It can be risky, especially when you’re small, but under the right circumstances, it can be invaluable. I’ve read about plenty of reasons to say no to customers, so I wanted to share a few reasons to say yes.
So, when should you say yes to a customer?
Photo by Johannes Waibel on Unsplash
When you have vision lock with them
The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) was an important early customer. They asked us to create a new experience that connected Olympic fans and athletes. At that time, we were a small, bootstrapped team, and they expected something different than the product we offered at the time.
And I mean very different.
But we recognized that building the next version of CrowdRiff in partnership with such a great brand was a unique opportunity.
We redesigned the product from the ground up, focusing entirely on uncovering the best photos and videos shared by fans and athletes on social media. From the outset, the COC had a lot of input. Involving a customer in the product development process makes a lot of startups nervous, but we were comfortable with it because we were so aligned with the COC on the vision of the project. We both felt strongly that authentic visuals were the best way to connect fans and allow everyone to experience the Olympics from a new perspective. Knowing that we were envisioning the same outcome made the collaboration more of an opportunity than a risk.
In the months that followed, we were able to use what we’d built with the COC as a springboard to sign a new group of customers, and begin to carve out a niche for ourselves in the travel and tourism market.
When the feature is a sign of things to come
One of our early features allowed customers to acquire rights to social content by getting users to respond to a request with a special hashtag. It was a straightforward process, and it was working well.
But due to local privacy regulations, one of our customers required a much more involved solution for obtaining legal rights to social photos. Taking on these types of complex projects can really drain your resources, especially when they involve legal regulations, but they can also create a meaningful advantage.
The tough part is determining whether it’s worth your while. Ultimately, there were four reasons we decided to say yes.
This customer was (and is) highly respected in the industry. Other members of the space often follow their lead.
It was a big brand. We’d been looking for an opportunity to move up-market, and we thought their needs were representative of other major players. Solving the problem would strengthen our value proposition for big brands.
They were open to paying a premium to have direct input. They respected our time. It also gave us a chance to prove ourselves as a resource. They became our largest customer at the time.
They were willing to collaborate on the design instead of dictating requirements. This was very important because we knew the solution needed to be capable of adapting to other customers in the future.
It was a really positive process. We created InVision prototypes and jumped on multiple calls for feedback along the way. There were some compromises, but the customer was excited and our team was proud of the solution.
The feature also went on to become one of the highest revenue-generating features of our platform, all because we said yes.
Photo by Soroush Karimi on Unsplash
When they’re committed to the cause
We met a brand that had built a customized experience for social photos and recently discovered that it was costing them more just to maintain the code for that page than it would cost to purchase our platform. It should’ve been a slam dunk, but our platform was missing one small feature that their custom solution provided: the ability to add a call to action (CTA) button to each photo. Their process for adding CTAs was laborious and time-consuming, but the functionality was really important to them. We knew we could build a better experience. We decided to say yes to building the new feature for three reasons:
The customer was clearly committed to solving the problem, based on the amount of effort they were already putting in on a daily basis to get CTAs on their photos. The need had been validated.
There were indications that competitors were starting to build similar features, so working directly with a customer would help us develop an effective solution quickly.
The customer was in our “sweet spot”: their team size and industry fit our target profile. If they were interested in the feature, chances are others in the market segment would be too.
Our team had multiple screen-sharing sessions with the customer to learn about the manual process they were following today.
We asked lots of questions like…
“Why do you do it this way?”
“What’s the point of this step?”
“Can you think of ways to make this easier?”
Through those conversations, we learned about their workflows — not just what they wanted the feature to do, but how they’d be using it. That allowed us to build a solution that was not only effective, but also usable.
The customer was delighted that we actually improved on their current process instead of just replicating it. We devoted time and resources to the project, but so did they. Meaningful collaboration requires both sides to be invested. When a customer’s as dedicated to success as you are, it’s a reason to say yes.
CTAs quickly became a core part of our platform. Again, saying yes paid off.
Photo by Thomas Kelley on Unsplash
When to say yes
Looking back on the last three years of building CrowdRiff, there are two key factors we consider when deciding to say yes to a customer.
Who’s the customer?
Are they innovative?After spending some time with a customer you can often tell if they are pushing the envelope. Aside from a specific feature request, are you impressed with the other work they’ve done?
Are they influential? An influential customer can offer added value through case studies, referrals and more. Look for signs of influence: Do they speak at conferences? What awards have they won? Do they have strong connections in the industry?
Are they a fit?It’s generally safer to work closely with a customer that is representative of your current customer profile. Alternatively, they might be a directional fit with the kind of customer you hope to have in the future.
Are they collaborative? To say yes to a customer, they have to be willing to operate as a true partner. That means being responsive, engaged, and open to compromising.
What’s the idea?
Does it align with your vision? Be careful here. There are lots of great ideas out there, but they may not align with the direction of your product. If you take on projects that don’t fit your vision, you risk taking the company off-course.
Is it already planned? Some ideas are already planned in your roadmap and saying yes is just a matter of prioritization. Consider what the feature would bump in your roadmap if it was accelerated. Is it worth it?
Will it benefit other customers? You should be keeping a central list of needs and requests from all your customers. Return to that list and determine if this idea will either serve other customers immediately or open the door to develop other requested features.
What’s the effort? Consider what the customer expects from a first version. How much effort would it take to build the feature? Don’t get trapped by low-effort features, though. If it doesn’t align with your vision or benefit other customers, it might not be worth the effort.
There’s no perfect formula for deciding when to say yes to a customer, but the criteria above have served us well at CrowdRiff. Every company should feel a great deal of gratitude toward their customers. They should obsess over them, learn from them, and always remain open to saying yes.
While such iconic natural wonders have historically inspired adventure seekers and wildlife enthusiasts from neighboring states to make the drive, the would-be travelers from beyond driving distance often fail to appreciate the diverse characters and experiences that surround these attractions.
Setting Wyoming apart from other outdoor adventure destinations
“While we are so blessed to have those icons in our state, I think the challenge is [showing] that there are a lot of other fabulous areas, and Wyoming is a very diverse landscape,” said Kristin Dialessi, the Brand Integration Senior Manager for the Wyoming Office of Tourism. “We want to show the diversity of our landscapes and our people beyond just the quintessential Tetons, Yellowstone, and American cowboy.”
Prior to 2015 Dialessi says much of the state’s marketing materials focused on showcasing those iconic landscapes and natural wonders, adding that they often lacked a more personal, relatable touch. Furthermore, while these specific landmarks are unique to Wyoming, travelers looking for outdoor adventures have plenty of other states to choose from, including nearby Montana and Colorado.
“The imagery in our campaigns was just a lot of landscape imagery, and in the last couple of years we’ve really shifted to more of the human element,” she said.
“Now you see people in all of the executions, and personal stories, and more recommendations on what these individuals love about the destination, or how it’s influenced their lives or their work.”
To help take them in this new direction, the Wyoming Office of Tourism hired a full-service agency of record based in Milwaukee called BVK in the summer of 2015. The goal, according to Dialessi, was threefold:
Showcase the personal stories beyond the epic landscapes
Show how the destination is unique from neighboring states with comparable landscapes
Target a wider national audience
“Rather than just speaking somewhat generically about all of the outdoor activities here in Wyoming, we needed something we could truly call our own,” said Dialessi. “That’s where you see the birth of these That’s WY Stories, capitalizing on things that are truly Wyoming and Wyoming only.”
Tying in the traditional epic imagery with intimate stories
Soon after bringing BVK on board, the agency began production on a series of multimedia stories showcasing not just the unique landscapes of the state, but the unique stories of its residents as well. Each story is anchored by a two- to three-minute video profile supported by additional images, written stories, and behind-the-scenes content.
“This entire campaign is rooted in the creative concept of epic intimacy,” said Dialessi.
“We want to make sure we’re still showcasing our epic and iconic landscapes, and places that people already know about and can relate to, but then adding in an additional layer and making it extremely personal.”
As a result, the That’s WY campaign profiles a range of diverse local experts in iconic settings, such as mountain climbers, rope manufacturers, ranch owners, and dogsledders.
“The amount of people we have in the state that we could produce these stories on is endless,” she said, “so one of our challenges is actually to resist the urge to produce more and more and more, because eventually we need to shift more of our production budget towards media to get them out.”
How Travel Wyoming and BVK brought the That’s WY Stories videos to life
The Wyoming Office of Tourism got to work on the That’s WY campaign soon after hiring BVK, shooting its first three videos in the summer of 2015 and launching the campaign in early 2016, promoting that year’s summer travel season.
“Since then, we’ve been on a similar production schedule,” said Dialessi. “In the summer of 2016 we created another three content pieces that became our featured content stories for summer of 2017, and the same thing in the summer of 2017.”
Dialessi adds that the videos are typically shot in groups of three over an eight- to 12-day shooting schedule each summer, then edited over autumn and released in the winter. Thus far the campaign has produced nine feature videos along with supporting content.
“It is a truly integrated campaign, and so while we have these videos we also have 15- and 30-second cutdowns that we use for digital advertising for native units,” she said.
“For every video that’s produced, there’s also a long-form article and then on social media we’ve got snippets that come out, like interviews, we do a lot of follow-ups, behind-the-scenes information or itinerary suggestions based off of these stories.”
Seeing a direct impact in tourism growth
The stories can be found everywhere from YouTube and social media to email newsletters and digital ads. After more than two years of the That’s WY campaign, Dialessi says many of its initial goals have already been met.
“Incremental travel has continued to grow over the last few years as well, and that’s specifically people who have seen the advertising and were inspired to travel because of it. That’s a direct conversion, and that continues to increase.”
Dialessi also adds that national awareness has also increased steadily since the launch of the campaign. “Those indicators alone tell us the strategy is resonating.”
While Dialessi wants to continue showcasing some of the state’s most interesting characters and their stories, she knows that there’s enough content already available to switch the budgeting priority to distribution and promotion moving forward. Though shooting will be scaled back, she can rest assured knowing that the content has successfully created an emotional connection with viewers, something rock formations and mountainous landscapes could never do alone.
“It’s just that human connection, that’s what we’re really trying to provoke within people. Hopefully it will open their minds and inspire them to take a trip that’s slightly different than what they envisioned a trip to Wyoming would look like.”
When you think about UGC marketing, it’s likely in the context of social media. After all, that’s where user-generated content is created and shared (for free) by users.
Most DMOs use visual UGC primarily to engage with customers across social networks or on website galleries.
However, UGC marketing is evolving. We’re seeing a number of trends emerge as DMOs discover new ways to get the most out of social photos and videos.
So, today, I want to talk about what’s next.
What does the future of UGC look like – and how will it shape the way brands leverage visual content?
Let’s take a look at six emerging trends in UGC marketing you’ll want to pay attention to.
First of all, video is exploding. Consider these stats:
Stats from AdAge
Not only is there more content being created, but there are also more people watching user-generated video.
According to AdAge, there’s been a 360% increase in the number of videos showing up in Facebook newsfeeds. Plus, YouTube — which hosts a mix of UGC and brand content — now reaches more 18-49 year-olds than any cable network in the U.S.
Whether they’re Snapchatting every step of their journey or broadcasting an amazing view on Facebook Live, travelers are creating more user-generated video than ever before.
2 | UGC is playing a bigger role in visual decision making
At CrowdRiff, we often say that visual UGC is much more than a pretty picture – and this has never been more true. These days, visuals – especially those from friends or peers – directly influence how travelers make decisions.
So how can DMOs take advantage of this?
Visit Phoenix is one DMO that’s taking advantage of UGC’s influence on decision making. With UGC website galleries embedded on over 90 pages of their site, they use authentic imagery to give multiple snapshots into their destination.
Even better, using CrowdRiff, they overlay clickable custom captions that give visitors the information they want – in this case, the hotel name and a link to its listing page – when they are intrigued by a photo.
Instead of redirecting visitors to Instagram when they click on a photo, these calls-to-action provide more details and take visitors deeper into the website.
This is a win-win-win scenario: it’s helpful for visitors, the DMO gets to keep visitors on their page for longer, and the DMO can easily drive traffic to their tourism partners.
3 | Blurring the lines between UGC, owned & paid media
Brands are trying to emulate the unfiltered authenticity of UGC. As a result, the distinction between UGC, owned, and paid visuals is becoming less and less clear.
For instance, Visit Seattle has invested heavily in video content for their channel called VisitSeattle.tv. They partner with real travelers in video series that put the visitor experience front and center — just like UGC does, but with a much higher production value.
This begs the question, are influencers who partner with brands any different from paid media?
(Psst…the image on the left is UGC and the one on the right is a stock photo. Did you guess right?)
Furthermore, each destination has a bunch of local micro-influencers – those who don’t have thousands of followers but are passionate about sharing content around your destination – yet don’t think to showcase them in their marketing.
As the lines between paid and authentic content continue to blur, we hope to see more DMOs discover the power of micro-influencers.
Why? Because small-scale influencers still hold plenty of clout for your destination and their content is unfiltered – which is what other travelers love most about it.
4 | AI is making it easier to manage large (and growing) volumes of UGC
Today, 3.2 billion images are shared every day! The modern traveler is obsessed with capturing and sharing their experiences online. This means marketers have a growing pool of UGC to dip into… but it also means that it’s that much harder to quickly locate the specific high-quality visuals you need when you need it.
As travelers continue to create more content than ever before, technology must adapt to help marketers make sense of their growing libraries of UGC photos and videos – especially since people don’t always use the most descriptive captions on their Instagram posts.
Luckily, leading visual marketing platforms like CrowdRiff are adapting to leverage AI and machine learning technology. CrowdRiff automatically tag images and videos with relevant keywords that perfectly match the content.
What’s more, because there is so much content being produced, AI is making it easier to filter out the top imagery you’ll want to use, from the rest of the noise.
CrowdRiff uses machine learning and industry insights to learn which photos are the most engaging and get the most clicks — then surfaces these for you. That means you don’t have to waste time scrolling endlessly through social imagery that just isn’t right for your needs. If you want to get a taste of this AI-assisted photo selection, try your hand at this quiz we made.
It doesn’t matter if it’s social UGC, professional, or otherwise – you should always be able to easily find the ideal image wherever you manage your visual content. These advances in artificial intelligence are helping marketers find the visuals they need, when they need it.
5 | UGC will power every marketing channel
The real-time nature of UGC means it will always be the freshest source of authentic visual content for your brand.
Combine that with the fact that 85% of consumers find UGC more influential than brand visuals, and there’s no denying that UGC is something of a marketing asset superstar.
So, it’s not surprising that UGC is taking on a larger role in just about every aspect of tourism marketing – including both print and digital assets.
Almost anywhere you typically feature branded visuals, you can swap in UGC to send a more powerful, timely message. From brochures, visitor guides, and on-location digital screen (like Blue Mountain uses) to microsites, website galleries, and clickable buttons overlaid with CTAs, UGC is popping up in just about every vertical and marketing channel imaginable.
Visit Colorado takes advantage of CrowdRiff’s API to push out real-time user-generated content in their digital takeover ads. So, instead of taking weeks to update their content, Visit Colorado can react accordingly to changes in the weather and local updates. They can switch between featuring different locations and images quickly and responsively.
Now that algorithms prioritize content with higher engagement in feeds, as opposed to whatever was posted first), marketers will have to find new ways to make sure their content is getting the views they want. For example, using tools that can surface top-performing visuals to then post on social media.
On the flip side, marketers will also have to change the way they find the great content people are posting too. This is especially true as Instagram and Facebook continue to improve privacy for individual users. Going forward, there is an increasing need for marketers to lean on their visual marketing platforms to surface the content they might’ve missed.
CrowdRiff can bring in all the content being shared in your destination and combine it with your owned assets. Everything that’s being posted about your travel brand will show up in your collection. That along with an intelligent search means any visual you’d want to find is always at your fingertips.
Stay ahead of the curve with the visual marketing platform that’s always looking forward
Technology is catching up to support new advances in UGC marketing, so that marketers like you can make the most of every opportunity to captivate a traveler.
From the latest AI-powered capabilities, to partner connected collaboration and more, CrowdRiff is the one visual marketing platform that’s staying ahead of the pack.
As a savvy marketer, you’re now probably familiar with user-generated content. But are you using user-generated video? And are you maximizing on this medium’s potential ROI to boost your brand?
Video is exploding in popularity with consumers and businesses alike.
45% of people watch more than an hour’s worth of video each week on Facebook or YouTube
Considering the huge opportunity to amplify your brand message, video is a great pillar to incorporate into your organization’s marketing strategy. But not all that video content needs to be created by you.
Tapping into user-generated video is a way to keep production costs low while spotlighting happy locals and travelers.
Here are 3 ways to get you started.
1 | Transform user-generated images into user-generated video
When searching for user-generated content (UGC), you don’t need to wait around for the perfect video to show up. That’s right — there’s no need for actual video footage when sourcing great videos for a campaign.
Not only is using such editing prowess low-cost — it’s also low effort. A variety of tools like TimeLapse, Clip Stitch, and Magisto allow you to quickly combine a series of images into an edited video to then share on your social channels.
So, even if there aren’t any user-generated videos online that meet your marketing needs, you can create one without spending hours editing the final product.
Hosting a contest or giveaway is an easy, fun, and engaging way to create more UGC and social conversation around your destination.
Try building a contest allowing fans to submit a short video as an entry for a prize. For example: Ask your followers to submit a video showing off a free activity in your destination.
How this benefits your brand
Hosting these kind of user-generated video contests helps you build rapport and engagement by encouraging them to do something they already do regularly — upload videos to social media.
Use a branded hashtag for the contest so it’s easy for you to track mentions and for other fans to find each other’s content to share, like, and leave comments. After all, the more engagement these posts receive, the more people will learn about your destination.
Example: Nelson and Kootenay Lakes Tourism
Nelson and Kootenay Lakes Tourism has started a photo & video contest called Finding Awesome, where they invite people to find their awesome moments in the area, and share them on social media.
All winning entries are featured in a blog post on the Nelson and Kootenay Lakes blog; video winners receive a $500 cash prize, as well as a one-night stay in the region!
Surely enough, people have generated tons of great video content.
3 | Give in-house videos a ‘user-generated’ look
Admittedly, this one is more of a “hack”: it’s not really “user-generated” video, but it takes advantage of what makes user-generated video so effective.
See, more brands are now ditching the perfect, magazine-quality videos and images that used to mark many marketing campaigns, particularly in the travel industry. Instead, they’re opting for a more unfiltered, unedited and ultimately authentic feel for their visuals.
Now with the rise of Snapchat and Instagram stories, the unique (and sometimes slightly grainy quality) of user-generated video has become the new norm and ultimate marker of authenticity.
How this benefits your brand
Keeping your videos only lightly edited (or unedited!) feel gives your brand a dose of authenticity — which can go far when building trust with your target audience.
“Traditional marketing used to be all about perfectly glossy images and videos,” says Diana Mendes, Brand and Marketing Manager, Destination Queenstown.
“Now I think we’re evolving to a space where authenticity comes first, so we enjoy being able to work with content that is a bit more raw sometimes. Customers evolved and they understand when they are being sold to, I believe we all question things that look too perfect now, so authentic and spontaneous content can add a degree of credibility to a content strategy.”
Example: GoPro
Camera company GoPro is, well — a pro at creating videos with that user-generated look and feel.
Almost every ad uses footage from a GoPro user or someone from the company using a GoPro camera. The shots are shaky, unstable, and sometimes less-than-perfect when it comes to quality. However, GoPro has made big bucks relying on user-generated videos from its fans and followers. They prominently feature fan footage on their Instagram and YouTube channels.
Is video a mainstay in your marketing strategy yet?
User-generated videos not only save you serious cash on production costs — they also offer marketers a chance to promote their brand with fan videos that offer a better ROI than most other types of content.
Though it’s blessed with breathtaking natural views, 130 km of pristine seaside shoreline, vast forests and is world-renowned for its saunas, none of these elements qualify as Helsinki’s top attraction, according to the Marketing and Communications Director for Helsinki Marketing Tia Hallanoro.
“I would still say that the biggest attraction is the people of Helsinki.”
She explains, “Everyone is free to be part of the city as they are, with no filter, to proudly carry their own values and experiences. Helsinki has turned its people into activists who open restaurants in their living room and invite strangers to their sauna.”
Though Helsinki has long had a website dedicated to showcasing its more traditional tourist attractions, VisitHelsinki.fi, Hallanoro says that the website didn’t really capture that one key element, which made the city unique.
“Helsinki is still relatively unknown,” she said. “Helsinki is unusual, a little strange, an ecosystem that has evolved by the open sea. Already discovered by the intrepid, Helsinki is just opening up to the world.”
So how do you introduce the rest of the world to not just the natural beauty and manmade attractions, but the actual people of a city who make it great? Not with a traditional tourism website, as Helsinki Marketing recently decided.
MyHelsinki: A new DMO website that brings locals into the conversation
Rather than continuing to invest time, energy and resources into a conversation that only existed between their brand and visitors, the destination marketing organization recently decided to switch its marketing approach in order to include its own biggest advocates: their locals. To do, so they developed a brand new website that launched in beta mode this past June. Unlike VisitHelsinki.fi, however, the new website, MyHelsinki.fi, hopes to loop in locals just as much as it does the city’s visitors.
The new website takes a visuals-first approach, and prominently features images of civic attractions and citizens alike. It also features a simpler, more streamlined design, making it easier to explore content and soak in the vibrancy exuded from its bold imagery and animated color scheme. Content is displayed in visual collages, similar to Pinterest.
The site still features many of the visitor resources one would come to expect from a DMO website, including city guides, food and nightlife tips, and convention/conference information — but the overwhelming focus of the website is on the recommendations from people who have made Helsinki their home.
“In keeping with the website’s service promise, ‘Your local guide to Helsinki,’ all the content has been compiled by locals.”
“Personal recommendations are overwhelmingly effective marketing tools in the social media environment. MyHelsinki.fi gives you recommendations that you can trust.”
To give travelers inspiration from the same place locals get it
The beta version launched in Finnish, Swedish and English and will also be available in Japanese, Chinese, Russian and German once the full version launches later this year. The goal, explains Hallanoro, is to replace the tourist-only website with one whose content is compiled by locals for the benefit of both locals and visitors alike.
“MyHelsinki brings together content about the city’s tourism offerings and business opportunities in a single website,” she said.
When the full website launches later this year it will also include a ‘neighbourhoods’ section, explains Hallanoro, where locals can recommend experiences based on location.
“The website also allows users to list their own favorites to help others enjoy the perfect city break in and around Helsinki. We want to show real life emotions and authenticity with no filter.”
In keeping with the by-locals theme all of the website’s vibrant visual content has been sourced from local photographers and social media posts tagged with the hashtag #MyHelsinki.
The new website and concept is already gaining traction
Though still in its beta version the new website is starting to attract some attention from locals and visitors alike. While VisitHelsinki.fi typically sees 4 million annual visitors, the first few months of MyHelsinki.fi’s beta debut has already attracted 130,000 visitors: Not bad for a city of about 600,000.
“It is very important to us that we attract local residents, visitors and businesses to help us develop the service,” said Hallanoro.
“The design is based on user needs, so we gathered feedback already at the start of the project. We also look forward to receiving additional feedback after the launch of the service.”
With a design and concept that truly captures the exuberance of Helsinki’s people, this new website ultimately aims to not only be a platform for locals to share, learn and explore their own city together, but also provide prospective visitors a genuine taste of the destination and its people.
Earlier this year, we had the pleasure of hosting a webinar with Bound (formerly known as Get Smart Content), a tool that helps brands deliver personalized digital experiences to website visitors.
Modern day travelers are visual decision makers, who are increasingly expecting tailored experiences online. So, we took this opportunity to discuss how DMOs can leverage the combined power of UGC marketing and personalization to deliver the best visuals at the right time.
Background on Personalization in Tourism Marketing
While one-size-fits-all web content was the accepted norm several years ago, today’s consumers expect digital personalization.
Brands today have access to more actionable data than ever, including a website visitor’s location, entry path to the site, time spent on each page, and what type of content they engage with.
If you know your visitors are from, say China, show them Chinese traveler content! If you know they’re foodies, show them mouth-watering photos of your destination’s most popular eats.
Consider these compelling results from destinations who have combined personalization and UGC marketing:
So, if you know what a visitor is interested in, show them what they want to see!
How Personalization Ties In with Visual Marketing
Authentic images and videos inspire visitors to make important travel decisions. This includes everything from where to stay and where to eat to when to visit and what to do on a given day in a destination.
So for maximum impact, DMOs are using personalization tools like Bound in tandem with CrowdRiff to show the right visuals at the right time.
In this way, DMOs can show the most useful and impactful visuals to create personalized experiences for each visitor.
3 Examples of DMOs Successfully Combining Personalization and UGC Marketing
1 | Explore Branson: Personalized UGC Galleries Based on Customer Interests
On their website, Explore Branson displays custom galleries of visual user-generated content tailored to their visitors’ known interests.
How? They analyze what the visitor has previously looked at or engaged with online and use Bound to deliver the most appropriate CrowdRiff galleries.
For example, they can identify which website visitors have a passion for outdoor activities and then display a custom gallery of people hiking, wakeboarding, and surfing in Branson like this one:
Of course, they also have a generic CrowdRiff gallery with a range of photo types to appeal to any visitor who doesn’t fall into one of the special interest categories they’re targeting.
2 | Discover the Palm Beaches: Personalized UGC Galleries Based on Visitor Location
Understanding visitor demographics opens up an entirely new way to customize visual content. Discover the Palm Beaches takes advantage of Bound to deliver a custom CrowdRiff gallery of UGC visuals linked to each web visitor’s geographic location.
Like many DMOs, Palm Beaches has several geographic markets they target and they understand what those different markets are most interested in experiencing when they visit. So, they use that knowledge to create personalized UGC galleries that correspond with market interests.
For example, people currently in Palm Beach like to see images of the beach and events, so there is a personalized gallery based on those topics for locals.
Palm Beach has a number of drive markets that come for the restaurants, culture, and brewery tours, so they also created galleries reflective of those interests.
Palm Beach’s key fly markets, on the other hand, are drawn by outdoor activities, but they also want to see images of parks and popular restaurants.
If your different markets have distinct interests, you can develop unique UGC galleries for each so they see the most relevant images as soon as they visit your site.
3 | Visit Franklin: Personalization Based on Paid Media Engagement
Visit Franklin uses CrowdRiff and Bound to complement their paid media campaigns. Bound identifies which campaign each visitor has clicked on and then CrowdRiff delivers the most appropriate UGC gallery.
Like Explore Branson and Discover the Palm Beaches, they have a standard one-size-fits-all gallery on their homepage with a variety of images.
However, the real magic is how they take data from their paid media campaigns, which target travelers based on different interests, and provide truly powerful, personalized experiences.
For example, Franklin has a fantastic music scene that they’ve created a paid campaign around. Whenever someone clicks on a music-themed ad, Visit Franklin knows two things with certainty: the visitor is interested in music (because they were targeted with the ad) and it resonated with them enough to click through (which is how they reached the site).
The next step is coupling what they know about the visitor to curate and deliver a personalized music-focused gallery – which is much more compelling than generic images of the destination.
Key Takeaways on UGC Marketing & Personalization
Your website is your most important asset as a marketer. It’s where you’re driving traffic to. Whether you’re serving a digital ad to someone or advertising in a magazine, the goal is getting visitors to your website.
When thinking about your website, shift from just words to visuals. Visual content plays a huge role in attracting visitors and telling the story of your destination, both when it comes driving clicks as well as branding to help consumers understand why they should visit your destination.
Personalized content increases engagement conversion. There are many different aspects to personalization. By providing more relevant content based on visitor context (Are they a first-time visitor? Part of your fly market? Driving in?) you can increase conversions and engagement on your website.
Connecting your tech stack helps you realize higher value. For instance, using CrowdRiff and Bound together allows DMOs to serve up relevant content to any visitor based on their interests.
Create the Best Experience for Your Web Visitors
Personalization can take your UGC marketing to the next level, and vice versa. To get a glimpse of what you could be doing, watch the full webinar today.
Whose opinion do you trust more when it comes to trying something new: your friends’, or a brand’s?
Most of us would instantly choose the former. Chances are if you see a great photo one of your friends took of that cool new café around the corner, you’d go there much more quickly than if the photo popped up as an Instagram ad.
That’s why user-generated content (UGC) is so effective. By sharing real content that your fans have created, you’re giving potential customers a sneak peek into the authentic way people feel about you, rather than just giving your brand’s perspective.
…but now that you’re all revved up and ready to go create an amazing UGC campaign of your own, you might be wondering where to start.
So, we’ve compiled a list of 9 creative UGC marketing campaigns to give you ample inspiration, and help you start reaping the benefits of UGC. Let’s dive in!
1 | Explore Georgia, #ExploreGeorgiaPup
Last autumn, Explore Georgia decided to reach out to an underserved demographic in the destination marketing market: millennial pet owners. By creating the #ExploreGeorgiaPup campaign, they featured photos of dogs from locals and visitors on social media, and encouraged people to share their own pup photos. They even sourced travel tips to create pet-friendly travel guides for various locations!
Focusing on man’s best friend paid off. Throughout this campaign, they saw over 3,000 uses of the hashtag in under a year, which led over 14,000 visitors to their website. They also reached over 10,000 followers on their pet-friendly travel Pinterest board.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
Who doesn’t love a good dog photo? Instagram is full of accounts of adorable pets (chances are you follow some yourself). #ExploreGeorgiaPup was successful because it connected:
A popular trending topic
The right social network
The interests of their target market
So, by sharing photos of their state’s furriest friends, Explore Georgia was guaranteed to generate lots of love.
2 | #TheUPSStoreCustomer
Although you might not think a B2B brand that focuses on shipping would have a particularly strong Instagram game, you’d be surprised. Using the hashtag #TheUPSStoreCustomer, The UPS Store shares photos taken by their customers to give behind-the-scenes examples of just how they’re helping small businesses every day.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
This campaign showed that, even if you’re not a traditionally “sexy” brand, it’s still possible to showcase your customers’ experience in a visual, relatable way. By a) spotlighting customers and b) using visuals, they’re able to tell their brand story in a way that feels authentic and charming.
3 | Starbucks’ #WhiteCupContest
It’s hardly possible to write a post about creative UGC campaigns without mentioning this giant. Starbucks uses a lot of user-generated content in their marketing, but the most noteworthy campaign is probably their White Cup Contest. In 2014, the coffee chain asked customers to draw on their white cups and create a new design that would then be turned into a limited-edition tumbler — generating almost 4,000 entries in three weeks.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
By crowdsourcing their new design, it made the worldwide coffee giant feel more down to earth and brought fans closer to them. And of course, excited Starbucks customers couldn’t wait to get their hands on the new cups, and snap photos of it to social media.
Plus, many UGC campaigns remain solely online. By turning the winning design into a cup that could actually be purchased in-store, Starbucks pushed the limits of UGC and showed that it can exist beyond social media promotions.
4 | Ripley’s Believe It Or Not #RipleysGo Contest
Remember when Pokémon Go was a big deal? The craze was in full swing last July, leading Ripley’s Believe It Or Not (a popular attraction featuring collections of oddities) to create a UGC campaign centered around the app. They asked visitors to take photos using the virtual reality portion of the app whenever they saw a Pokemon and post them to social media with the hashtag #RipleysGo. Participating gave visitors the chance to win $100 randomly, and whoever found the rarest Pokémon at the end of the content would win $5,000.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
Rather than getting frustrated by the number of visitors pulling out their phones while checking out their attractions, Ripley’s turned it into an opportunity. They generated photos of their attraction while also inspiring visitors to continue exploring and walking around their attractions for as long as possible.
It also showed how well they knew their audience. By focusing on Pokemon Go, which was largely played by teens and young adults, they focused on the same market who’d be both visiting their attractions and likely to post about it on social media–leaving Ripley’s with lots of publicity, social shares, and foot traffic.
5 | Destination Canada’s Found in Canada Video
Last year, Destination Canada (the organization in charge of promoting tourism in Canada) launched a huge video campaign to target the U.S. travel market. But instead of going out and capturing their own footage of their vast country, they tapped into the user-generated content that already existed on social media.
Within a period of 2 weeks, they’d acquired rights to over 2,500 photos and videos from social media, and turned them into a series of short, fun, and exciting videos. Best of all: these videos went viral, reaching over 3 million views within a week.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
Destination Canada stretched user-generated content beyond its original medium — they took social media content off of social media, stitched it together, and transformed it into outstanding videos.
What’s more, these videos were bound to go viral from the get-go. Everyone whose photo or video was featured in this video can’t help but feel a sense of ownership over the final product — and are excited to share it with their networks, meaning that it’s getting distributed again and again.
It might seem strange to associate this high-end fashion giant with user-generated content, but in 2014, this brand jumped into UGC with both feet. The designer announced that he wanted to cast “real people” in his next campaign, and asked fans to post selfies with the hashtag #CastMeMarc for a chance to be their next model… and after just 24 hours, they’d already generated over 15,000 uses of the hashtag, and a whole lot of social chatter around their brand!
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
Although you might not have quite as many followers as Marc Jacobs, you can still generate lots of interest by giving your audience access to something exclusive. In this case, the brand recognized that their followers were already taking tons of selfies and would jump at the chance to share one with Marc Jacobs. This was a great PR move and gave Marc Jacobs a great boost in awareness.
7 | Mint’s #MyMintMoment
UGC doesn’t just have to be about big occasions. Mint, a personal finance app, asked users to share the “moments where their life and finances align” and celebrate them through photos tagged with #MyMintMoment, for a chance to win $1,000. The contest allowed users to showcase and celebrate occurrences as large as a university graduation and as small as the purchase of a new dress, all while relating it back to the satisfaction they feel when correctly managing finances with Mint.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
By looking at the small purchases that their customers were able to celebrate, Mint gave an authentic glimpse into the benefit of budgeting — and by extension the value of their product. Highlighting the real wins their customers had (large or small), showed potential customers how they could benefit from using Mint, in a tangible way.
8 | Warby Parker’s #WarbyHomeTryOn
We're happy to help—feel free to share your photos using #warbyhometryon and we'll vote on our favorite!
One of the biggest problems with online shopping is not knowing how the product will look in real life. Warby Parker, an online glasses retailer, gets around this problem with their #WarbyHomeTryOn program. Here’s how it works:
Customers select 5 pairs of glasses
They receive them through the mail (including free shipping!)
They try them on, and snap pictures…
And get their friends to vote on social media which pair suits them best!
By asking their customers to share photos of themselves wearing their glasses, they’re able to generate tons of real-time publicity as well as showcasing the ability to try on and return them.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
Using user-generated content is a great way to break down objections that potential customers might have to purchasing your product. By showing real users trying on their glasses, Warby Parker creates a culture of transparency as well as educates their audience about their home try-on program. If you’re also in a business that customers need to see to believe, get them to share their experiences to show exactly how it works in real life.
9 | “Finding Awesome” with Nelson & Kootenay Lakes Tourism
The destination marketing organization was finding it difficult to attract the very specific type of visitor they catered to through traditional marketing techniques. By powering a new microsite entitled #FindingAwesome with ample visual UGC, they were able to demonstrate just how locals and visitors (existing members of their target demographic) “found awesome” in the region every day.
To encourage participation, the region ran two social media contests, which each garnered over 1500 entries, and shared the top entries on their blog.
Why this UGC marketing campaign stands out
Sometimes looking at what your customers are interested in, rather than just their demographics, is key to developing a great campaign. In targeting UGC by persona, Nelson & Kootenay was able to attract the specific customer who would be most interested in what they had to offer. To do the same, it’s crucial to create a campaign or a hashtag that speaks to them, rather than making it generic or product-based.
Creating a UGC marketing campaign that works for you
Ultimately, it’s important to remember that the focus in UGC marketing campaigns should always be the people posting it. The most successful campaigns aren’t aimed at pushing a product, but instead about letting the authentic love people have for your brand shine through and inspire other potential customers too.
Your fans are already creating everything you need… now it’s time to go out there and find it!
Earlier this year we launched a new and improved version of CrowdRiff’s visual marketing platform. We redesigned the platform to better enable our customers to put visuals at the core of their marketing.
Today we are excited to announce the newest iteration of the CrowdRiff API.
What is an API? For marketers who are unfamiliar with what an API is, the term API (which stands for Application Programming Interface) is basically a set of routines, protocols and tools for building software. Translated to CrowdRiff terms, using our API gives you a way to take CrowdRiff’s ability to source, organize, and publish visuals, and build on top of it to create something new.
The latest CrowdRiff API works seamlessly with the improved CrowdRiff platform. While much of what’s new is in the backend (the parts you don’t see!), the end result is more flexibility, more stability, and a more powerful search. All to say: there is more that you can create.
Access the same powerful API used by CrowdRiff’s engineers internally. It is important to us that our customers are equipped with the best possible tools. This API is the very same one our engineers depend on daily when building CrowdRiff– meaning it is the fastest, most reliable, and always up-to-date.
If you can imagine it, you can build it.
Let your creativity flow, and build exactly the digital marketing experience you want, with full flexibility and control over its look and feel. Whether you want to incorporate UGC into something like a campaign microsite, trip planner, or any innovative digital experience, with our API you can create it.
Build on top of the industry’s most loved visual marketing platform.
CrowdRiff is used by over 200 DMOs for a reason – it’s the best way to source, organize, and publish both UGC and owned visuals. Using our API means you start with the best foundation, with the ability to take it even further.
Discover what you can create using CrowdRiff’s API
Within this past year, we have been astounded by the creative ways our customers have used CrowdRiff’s API to create truly extraordinary digital experiences for travelers. Here are just a few examples:
1 | Destination British Columbia: BC Explorer
The BC Explorer is the first visual trip planner of its kind — powered by Instagram photos sourced and rights-approved with CrowdRiff.
Knowing that travelers like to get inspiration for their trip through Instagram, the Destination BC team wanted to create a visual trip planner using those visuals. Originally this was going to be built through the Instagram API — however:
“In talking to the techies at CrowdRiff, we learned there was an API that already did about half the things we wanted to do, in terms of adding calls-to-action, collecting photos,” says Ryan Leung, UX Specialist at Destination BC
So instead of starting from scratch, they used CrowdRiff’s API to bring the BC Explorer to life.
Now travelers can use the BC Explorer explore hundreds of UGC photos to draw visual inspiration on what to do in British Columbia.
When someone finds a photo that catches their eye, they’re shown links to articles and resources (these calls-to-action, which Ryan refers to, are one of the many enrichments available through CrowdRiff’s API) where they can learn more about what’s depicted, and then create custom itineraries based on their favorites. These photos are also magically plotted on a map, for easy planning.
Explore St. Louis’s microsite, STL.Live, was this DMO’s way to reach new millennial travelers through the content that resonated with them the best.
Using the CrowdRiff API, they curated over 3000+ user-generated visuals to create a stunningly immersive interface for millennials to explore everything St. Louis has to offer.
STL.Live has four sections: Beer, Music, Culture, Food. Each has a custom page of relevant visual content – like a photo album built around the topic. Here, visitors can explore a mix of social photos or watch videos Explore St. Louis produced with local influencers and talent, specifically on that topic.
“For each location that STL.Live focuses on, there are a few hundred photos behind that. The time it would have taken an entire team of people to curate that content, in its current form, with the social grid, which we believe is a key feature —it just couldn’t have happened without CrowdRiff,” saidShaun Young from Sr. Interactive Art Director at H&L Partners (Explore St. Louis’s agency partner).
Most DMOs publish galleries using CrowdRiff’s responsive templates, but for marketing teams that want to push the envelope with their customization, CrowdRiff’s API makes that entirely possible.
There, they feature a highly customizable gallery of user-generated visuals, curated into visual stories based on different interests. A web visitor can click on various hashtags (shown below) to see a curated visual gallery of the activities they’re interested in.
In this way, people can interact and customize the visuals they see on their website, allowing visitors to see an authentic window into Illinois, through a more personalized experience.
With CrowdRiff’s API you have the ability to use our technology to tap into UGC as well as owned content to build anything you can dream up.
If your interest is piqued, we’d love to show you more. If you’re already a CrowdRiff customer, simply reach out to your dedicated customer success manager! And if you’re not using CrowdRiff yet, let us give you a personalized tour, and show you what’s possible.
Much of what distinguishes Toronto from other major North American cities are completely intangible qualities, making it sometimes difficult to convince people from those other cities that it is worth the trip north.
It’s more than the skyline that makes Toronto unique: there is a sense of not just being a diverse city, but of embracing diversity in a way that’s uniquely
Canadian.
Diversity: a pillar of Torontonian culture
This diversity, according to Tourism Toronto’s Chief Marketing Officer Andrew Weir, means lines for Bollywood films at the Toronto International Film Festival far surpass those of major Hollywood productions. It means festivals and events will celebrate specific international cultures, yet still welcome Torontonians of all backgrounds. It means not only being able to go out for Portuguese food, but also northern Portuguese seafood.
“And then what’s really exciting is when they come together, like when you have a Portuguese chef who takes his Indian chef friend shopping and they go cook at a Mexican restaurant together.
He explains, “Then you get the product of diversity, not just the fact of diversity, but what diversity tastes like and smells like and feels like. That’s what Toronto is all about.”
While that unique approach to diversity is a defining characteristic of the city, however, it doesn’t necessarily motivate travel.
“The research shows that people that don’t necessarily live in what we think of as highly diverse cities think they live in diverse cities, so even for people that live in much less diverse areas, the fact of ‘diversity’ is not a motivator,” he said.
“Diversity has to be more than just ‘we have people from everywhere,’ there has to be more to it than that, and that’s what we’ve tried to capture in our new campaign and our new branding.”
Tourism Toronto’s “The Views are Different Here”
That new campaign tries to capture that uniquely Torontonian sense of diversity in a one-minute video spot, accompanied by three 30-second spots that focus on specific elements like food and culture.
The videos are fast paced with quick cuts that cram a lot of different elements of the city into a short timeframe, all while attempting to capture that intangible feeling. The main spot begins with the campaign slogan, “the views are different here,” both a nod to its unique cultural perspective and an ode to the city’s most famous resident, Drake, and his 2016 album Views from the Six.
The ad continues with fast paced shots of ballet dancers performing on subway cars, major league Toronto sports teams, skate parks, a model walking into a downtown rooftop pool, hetero and homosexual couples kissing comfortably in public, jellyfish swimming by the window of an aquarium and much more. There’s even a shot of Drake himself.
The action shots are broken only by words that emphasize that sense of openness and diversity, such as “In this city, beauty has many faces,” “Love is love is love,” “In this city, it’s okay to let your guard down,” “All flavours are welcome” and finally “Canada’s Downtown.”
Weir says the ad includes shots of Canadian flag, sports teams that have their league’s only Canadian representation in Toronto (ie. the Raptors and Blue Jays), the final slogan declaring the city Canada’s downtown and even spells “flavours” the Canadian way (even though the ad was intended for an American audience) to intentionally emphasize that the city is not just another Chicago or Seattle or New York.
“The Canadian touches throughout the video and the campaign are very important, because we’re not just a big global city, we’re a big global city that’s distinctly Canadian. Without that Canadian part it’s easy to blend in with the other big cities in North America.”
Though it took nearly a year to plan the entire series was shot in just 4 days across 38 locations. Weir says Tourism Toronto had to limit production to the downtown core for logistic reasons, adding that there was much more they originally wanted to capture beyond its limits.
Going viral and reaching a resounding success
The video was published online in late April, and though it was given a paid media boost it far surpassed all expectations.
“We had hoped that by the end of the year we would achieve more than 6 million views of the one-minute video. We just surpassed 13 million views over different channels. Those are complete views by the way; it doesn’t count people who cut out part way.”
The three other thirty-second spots, along with the minute-long video, have since been translated into six other languages, and have been viewed more than 26 million times combined.
Why “The Views Are Different Here” went viral
Weir says the campaign was different from the DMO’s traditional focus, but its viral appeal proved that a key piece of the city’s marketing effort was missing previously.
He explains that Tourism Toronto typically partners with major brands, such as its partnership with Air Canada that encourages American travelers to stop over in Toronto before flying abroad, or its partnership with Major League Baseball that uses Yankee branding to appeal to New York-based sports fan.
“We found that having everything in our partners’ voices meant there wasn’t something strong and identity-defining in our own voice.”
“That was a gap in our program, and that’s what this was meant to address,” he said, emphasizing the importance of letting their own brand story shine through, alongside tourism partners.
The video illustrated this story of diversity and acceptance through showing Torontonians embodying these qualities themselves throughout the city. This being a point of pride, it resonated, and led to the video being shared fanatically over social media.
Now, at long last, the destination marketing organization and the city at large has something tangible that it can point to in order to describe a previously indescribable feeling: a clear view of what diversity looks like from Canada’s downtown.
User-generated content has never been more abundant and thriving than today.
With social media, everyone is a publisher; everyone is a photographer; and everyone has an opinion.
Now, more and more marketers are starting to realize the weight all this authentic customer content carries, and the strength it adds to their marketing.
We wrote this comprehensive guide to share the insights we’ve gained to give you a solid understanding of UGC marketing. From the basics to advanced tools, you’ll learn all you need to know to get confident about building your brand with UGC.
First, what is user-generated content, and why is it important in marketing?
User-generated content (or UGC for short) refers to any content (typically digital) that is created and shared by consumers or fans of a brand, about that brand. This includes anything from a casual Instagram post or Tweet, to something intentional, like a review or testimonial.
For example, let’s say you’ve just purchased a latte from your favorite coffee shop. Today they’ve done a particularly amazing job at creating that latte art swirl you love so much, and you just need to share this. So you snap up a pic and post it to Instagram.
And just like that, you’ve created a piece of user-generated content.
User-generated content is a shining beacon of light for marketers, because it falls into the category of earned media. You didn’t pay for this publicity — people have created it, however, and pushed it into the public eye because they like your brand well enough to talk about on their own time.
It’s in the name: user-generated content — content made by users. UGC is unbiased and created without an agenda. As a result, people perceive this kind of content to be more trustworthy, truthful, and authentic.
Let’s take a closer look at some common types of user-generated content:
Social media content
Social media is a goldmine of user-generated content, including:
Social photos and videos. When it comes to products, seeing is believing — especially when it’s people you know and trust doing the showing. People are taking and sharing thousands of photos & videos daily onto social media, and a huge portion of those are interacting with some sort of brand, ranging from restaurants, destinations, and fashion — just to name a few. This type of organic visual UGC is taking the online world by storm.
Tweets or other social media messages. Pretty much any time someone posts a social message about you, whether it’s a 140-character Tweet or a personal Facebook post, that is user-generated content.
Reviews
Whether your customers write reviews on a section of your website, or whether they use third-party review sites (such as Yelp, TripAdvisor, G2Crowd, Google, etc.) this kind of feedback is considered user-generated content.
Blog posts or video content
If for example you make lipsticks, any time a beauty blogger uses your product in a tutorial or in a review, whether it’s in a blog post or a video, this is user-generated content. And while you might think that blog posts and videos are more relevant for B2C companies, that’s not actually true! In the B2B world, marketers love reading and writing blog content. If your product or brand is featured as an example in round-up content, or as a key tool in a “how-to” blog post, that counts as user-generated content too.
What are benefits of using user-generated content in marketing?
There are so many reasons you should be using UGC in your marketing — both because it is simply more effective, and because it can help stretch your marketing budget. Here’s the lowdown:
UGC acts as social proof to reinforce your brand’s message
Every brand has its own story, and promises something to its target audience. However, people tend to take branded messages with a grain of salt, wary that companies want their business. When people see that other consumers are confirming your brand message through UGC, it acts as a second opinion reinforcing how your brand delivers on its promises.
For example, Buzzsumo is a marketing tool that promises to help you find the most shared content for any given topic as well as the key influencers who share it.
For someone who hasn’t used it before, you might wonder if this tool really works as well as they say. Buzzsumo, however, is one tool that gets a lot of, well, “buzz” in various marketing blogs (such as this one from Sprout Social), sourcing it as the tool for finding influencers and distributing content. This kind of third-party user-generated content is social proof that Buzzsumo is effective and worth using.
UGC is more influential on purchasing decisions
Because UGC is produced by individuals who don’t have anything to gain by singing your praises, it is perceived as being more authentic and more trustworthy. In fact, it’s been found to be 20% more influential than branded content alone.
UGC gives you a larger pool of visuals you can tap into to use in your marketing
In addition to commissioned and stock photography, user-generated content is a whole new source of visuals you can tap into for your marketing. The best part? There is a ton of visual UGC out there about your brand (especially if you’re in the B2C world).
The fact is that people love sharing photos and videos on social media. And now that pretty much every person online has a smartphone, snapping up a pic and uploading it to social media is as easy as pie. Consider this:
500 million Tweets go out every single day on Twitter (as of January 2017)
All that adds up to a lot of potential for user-generated content, and not to mention a huge reach. In fact, experts predict that this year, 1.3 trillion digital photos will be taken.
Tapping into this growing pool of visuals can dramatically increase the number of visuals you have available to use and get creative with. What’s more, for the most part, as long as you credit the original user, most will be happy to give you rights to their content without extra cost.
So you want to reap all those benefits of UGC? Here are 3 great examples of UGC marketing campaigns:
1 | User-generated content for video: Destination Canada’s Found in Canada
Last year, Destination Canada (the organization charged with promoting Canadian tourism) launched a huge video campaign to target the U.S. travel market. But instead of sending videographers to capture b-roll from all over their vast country (which happens to be the second largest country in the world by landmass!), they decided to tap into the visual content Canadians and international visitors were already sharing online.
Within 2 weeks, they’d acquired rights to over 2500 photos and videos from social media and turned them into a series of short, fun, and exciting videos. These videos went viral, reaching over 3 million views within a week.
2 | Showcasing the authentic customer experience: Columbus Museum of Art
The Columbus Museum of Art, located in Ohio, curates more than just fine art — on their digital channels, the Columbus Museum curate the best visitor photos to showcase. They encourage patrons to take photos while they’re there and use the hashtag #myCMA.
They then choose the best photos and transform them into website galleries, such as this one from their homepage:
By using visual UGC like this in their marketing, they let their fans do the talking, and paint an authentic picture of what a visit to their museum looks like — through user-generated content.
3 | Combatting buyer objections: Tim Hortons #TimsDark
In 2017, Tim Hortons, a Canadian coffee chain, took another stab at a discontinued product: dark roast coffee. And to reintroduce it to their coffee-adoring customers, they decided to loop in the social chatter from their last launch (which hadn’t gone as well as planned).
What they did with that UGC was ingenious:
We heard you, Canada! Dark Roast coffee is now darker and richer because of you. Try a fresh cup and tell us how we did using #TimsDarkpic.twitter.com/p3msNgKwvw
This is a really great example of combatting buyer objections. Instead of pretending all the negative UGC from last time didn’t exist, they chose to acknowledge it, and show that they’ve improved — and invite people to continue telling them their thoughts on social media!
By doing so, they foster an environment where they welcome UGC and show that they value it. And as a result, more people jumped into the conversation — but this time, the UGC was positive:
How do I generate more user-generated content on social media?
Here are some quick tips and tricks to get your customers sharing more visual UGC for your brand:
Encourage people to share their photos! Sometimes all it takes is a little prompting on social media, to show that you’re excited to see their captures.
Acknowledge people who share UGC. People don’t expect brands to see their Tweets or messages. Show your audience that you do hear them and what they have to say is valuable. This can be as simple as replying to them, retweeting them
Reward them for sharing photos! Prizes are great incentive to share photos — which is why photo contests are such a great way to generate UGC. But on a smaller scale, even just giving someone a little limelight by choosing to feature their image in your marketing is sufficient. It can then spark your other followers to share more, in hopes of getting featured too.
For more detailed tips and to-dos on how to inspire more people to share visual UGC on social media, here’s a handy blog post to keep on hand:
First, let’s address when you need to get rights to user-generated content.
If you want to use UGC visuals throughout your marketing just as you would an owned photo then you will need to get rights to them.
This includes:
Reposting a user-generated photo to your own social accounts
Using the photo in digital or print ads
Displaying the photo on your website without the original information (i.e. author name, caption, etc.) and/or a link back
Displaying a modified version of a photo
Basically, these are all instances where if someone were to look at the UGC photo you’re using, they wouldn’t know it was created by someone else. While this is no substitute for professional legal advice, we wrote a helpful guide to UGC rights, that would be a good idea to read over if you want to better understand the intricacies of user-generated content rights:
Most importantly, remember this: when in doubt, ask for permission!
How does user-generated content affect website performance?
Sometimes people wonder if displaying visual UGC on their website will negatively affect website performance. Specifically, when displaying user-generated photos and videos in a gallery layout of some sort, will it drive users away?
The answer: It depends on how you’re doing it!
Instagram widgets and plugins will drive people off your site.
Here’s the thing: we know you’ve got click-worthy photos.
But whenever someone clicks on a photo in a widget or plugin, they’re redirected to Instagram. So although these social hubs look pretty, they interrupt your web visitor’s experience, and reduce the time spent on your website.
An embed from a visual marketing platform like CrowdRiff will increase time on site and reduce bounce rate.
CrowdRiff allows you to embed galleries of UGC directly onto your web page. This way, your web visitors can explore your visuals in a seamless experience.
When browsing photos in a CrowdRiff gallery, anyone can easily click into it to see the full-screen image. Try it yourself here:
This also allows curious users to view the original description, comments, and hashtags without ever leaving having to leave your site.
In an A/B test of a web page where one brand displayed a UGC website gallery and one did not, the page that did have UGC won by a landslide, with a 351% increased time on site:
You can leverage visual user-generated content better with CrowdRiff
CrowdRiff’s visual marketing platform centralizes all your brand’s visual user-generated content (updating in real-time as people create more) together with your owned content.
Over 250 brands use CrowdRiff to:
Find the best undiscovered user-generated photos to make their websites, visitor guides and ads more visually appealing
Acquire rights to social media visuals and stretch their marketing budget
Show your audience the experiences they could be having, through the visuals that resonate the most. Get in touch to find out how CrowdRiff can help your brand rise above the noise, with user-generated content.
