6 Tips for Attracting Great UGC
Whether you are running a contest, an online audition or a community assignment, attracting UGC submissions can be a challenge. Here are some tips that you can apply to your campaign to draw more content from your website visitors.
Experiential and luxury prizes
While a huge cash prize can bring in a tonne of submissions, you are also going to attract pros and cheaters. Professional contesters scour the net for fast, easy contests and know every trick in the book to stuff the ballet box. A large cash prize is sufficient motivation for a good developer to build software to exploit your user-friendly entry process.
Branded contests and communities should be more interested in attracting their core fans and getting them excited and involved. Music fans will sing into their webcam, remix a video or create an original tour poster if it gives them a chance to meet their favourite band, get the limited edition box set or win an autographed guitar.
Make it Easy
Don’t make me think, don’t make me work. If at all possible, don’t even make me get up: let me say / sing / yell something into my webcam. Got a digital camera? Capture the everyday everyman: “Show us your backyard and win a patio set” or “Show us why you need a new car”.
Because most users need an imagination kick-start, one of the most critical elements for a successful campaign is seeded content. Nothing causes a high page bounce rate like the message, “Be the first to enter!”
Reach out to your internal network and get them to submit a video or photo.
When all else fails, have people upload a picture of their pet! Canadian Living has blown the doors off the UGC contest standard with two massively successful editions of Most Lovable Pet 2009 and this years 2010 campaign.
Attractive Association
I don’t want to be perceived as evil or a sell-out for participating. For example, “Show us how you club, and win a trip to Baby Seal Island” or “Tell us why you love Telecom Customer Service” are bad ideas and should be avoided.
Facebook Connect
When I upload my video, a link is automatically posted to my Facebook stream. When someone comments or votes, they can instantly tell all their friends. We have seen huge referral numbers from Facebook on our UGC campaigns. Campbell’s Chunky Most Valuable Coach in particular is a great example of getting the most out of Facebook Connect.
Multimedia Commenting
Text comments are great, but enabling comment attachments and webcam responses, you can increase the number of photos and videos on your site. Start a discussion or set a community assignment that facilitates the use of photos and videos. For example, a men’s forum might have a thread for the best hair style, while women might enjoy exchanging pictures of their gnarliest scars.
Community Management
As I’ve written before, community management is key. These days, growing an online community organically can be challenging if not impossible. Community management is the growth hormone and industrial pesticide of niche networks and brand-centric discussions.
Your niche community might be a resource for customers, such as a support forum or advice column. Depending on the technographics of your target audience, your manager(s) may be the life of the party, getting people excited, loosening them up and letting them participate in a way that keeps them feeling comfortable. The authors of Groundswell, a Forrester Research joint, provide the Consumer Technographic Profile Tool for figuring out what makes your audience tick.
Quality user-generated content, and multimedia in particular is not something that comes easy. Applying some of these tips to your next campaign, contest or community discussion will help keep things fresh and unique.
I had to comment as I take offence to your statement “Professional contesters scour the net for fast, easy contests and know every trick in the book to stuff the ballet box. A large cash prize is sufficient motivation for a good developer to build software to exploit your user-friendly entry process.”
I am a promotional marketing consultant (20+ years) and a contestor (8+ years). I do not make my living entering contests and therefore do not consider myself a professional. It’s my hobby. No different than collecting coins or stamps, knitting or quilting, or baking and gardening. It is an activity I enjoy that I spend time on. People view it differently because there may be a monetary reward at some point. I earn my money consulting, writing, and teaching.
Yes, there are “tricks” to entering, but not what you think. My #1 tip/trick to entering is to read the rules. You must follow them to a T or you will be disqualified. If the rules state one entry per person, that’s all I would enter. Ballot stuffing would only get me disqualified. I want to win, not cheat. True contestors don’t like the cheaters either as they ruin the hobby for everyone; the entrants, the sponsors, etc… (It is also the #1 tip I give my clients. Make sure your rules are air tight to prevent the cheaters.)
Also, I would love your opinion as to why this UGC contest is failing so miserably. http://trythesauce.ca/videos.html They are giving away $5000. There are only 30 entries. WOW! Talk about fantastic odds!
The entries are low because people have to get creative, make a video, and then it is voted up AND judged. Too hard. Yes, the reason the Canadian Living UGC contest was so successful was millions of people have pets and photos are easy to upload.
You also have to look at the reason a company is running a contest in the first place. If it is to engage their most loyal and valuable customers, by all means, make a “tough” UGC contest. If their objective is to build a prospect database quickly and easily, then have a one entry per person contest with a short questionnaire. If their objective is to get top-of-mind awareness then they should have a daily entry promotion so each person entering sees the brand every day. To drive the brand even further, add a game component to keep the entrant engaged.
So, before a company decides to run a UGC contest, they first need to determine their objective and build their promotion upon that, whatever the style may be.
Thank you so much for your thoughtful comments, Carolyn! You’ve made some excellent points, and added a lot of value to my post.
I certainly didn’t mean to offend, and hopefully I didn’t, since you are clearly not a “professional” who makes hay breaking captchas, creating dummy email addresses or finding other ways to add illicit votes.
Your best point, which is also your #1 tip is to read the rules. This is also my first piece of advice to clients who wish to run a UGC contest. Many contest hosts want to maximize the number of votes as they perceive this as a key performance indicator. I don’t agree (we’ll leave KPIs for a future post), but it is absolutely critical that the rules state that the winner IS NOT chosen by public votes exclusively. I discuss this point in some more detail in an earlier post.
My main point is that the target audience for a brand contest is the target audience for their product, and professional (or hobbiest) contestors are not that.
I totally agree with your assessment of the sauce contest. It doesn’t use any of my handy tips: cash prize, no clear and easy call-to-action, too much work, asks you to be a tomato sauce pitchman, no Facebook Connect, etc, etc… These types of campaigns can be more trouble than they’re worth.
I also see that it is using YouTube to host the video and commenting. This also has its problems, as discussed by Steve Hulford on the Filemobile blog.
Check out Carolyn’s excellent article at ContestQueen.com.