How to create a simple, but effective UGC strategy

How often — and meaningful — are your efforts to include readers in the pages of your print product and website?

It’s a topic that comes up a lot when we’re working with our clients because the opportunity to involve readers — and take advantage — of the content they might be willing to share, is so huge.

Today, I think this is an incredibly important area of focus for publishers for a host of reasons like the priority Google is putting on first-person experience (readers have that) and the need to have content from a diverse range of your community.

Asking readers for content — consistently — and in a variety of creative ways can have a profound impact on your audience growth and how your products feel to your community.

Here are a few ideas to consider:

1. Ask for content consistently

When you ask readers to share content, you have to do it consistently. That means doing it every week.

This is an important approach because it shows readers that you value their involvement and what they have to share.

A good way to get started is to create a calendar. We have built a 52-week calendar we’d be happy to share with anyone who is interested that lays out a schedule of what to ask for each week of the year from fall foliage photos to breast cancer awareness stories.

It’s worth it to have these call to actions show up in a variety of places: Your website, app, social media pages and newsletters.

Do those things daily as you get started. Then, if you have a print product, find a place that you can always feature the call to action.

2. Work to get the content

While getting promotions in place is necessary, it can’t be all that you do.

To be most effective, you have to work with parts of your community that may be willing to participate based on the call to action.

For example, for Thanksgiving, you could reach out to a school and see if a classroom would be willing to draw a picture of what their Thanksgiving turkeys will look like and then you could feature all of those images.

Or if you are doing something for National Nurses Week, reach out to your local hospital to see if they would be willing to share photos of their nurses or maybe nurses who are celebrating a milestone.

There are some call to actions that may not take that kind of effort like asking for flood photos during a storm, but others will be more successful if you partner with an organization.

All of these call to actions are perfectly set up for a variety of sponsorship opportunities. Some could even be contests. I would start building the interaction with the audience and then begin monetizing different elements, like a gallery or the call to action post.

3. Show off the content

Once you receive the content, make sure that you feature it prominently.

A great way to get started is to build a Facebook and Instagram album showing a few of the images you have received, tagging who shared them, and then encouraging readers to share their photos.

When readers see others doing what you’re encouraging them to do, they are more likely to follow, making this a great strategy.

There’s an interesting SEO component to all of this. Google is prioritizing content that comes from real experiences. So consider using your UGC strategy to seek their picks for things you might be writing about (pumpkin patches to try, places to get holiday pies from). Sharing their advice and experience in your content can not only build content for you but creates the opportunity to tie to something that Google is really prioritizing.

This kind of content can create a special experience for readers, especially if you package the best of it into products where the content feels special. Think about how you could use Reels to showcase this content in a fast-moving video or print pages that show it all off.