In today's day and age, where your followers are swamped with sales pitches and marketing messages, User Generated Content has the potential to be a goldmine for traffic, sales, and engagement. It simply makes a company seem more trustworthy and humanized, and taking advantage of the power of brand advocacy will result in loyalty.

Just think about this: most consumers are twice as likely to share user-generated content with friends or family because they simply trust in one another over brands. If you're not using this resource, this is a good time to start.

Check out some of the best practices we've seen!

2.2 million Instagram followers | 1.9 million Facebook likes | 168k Twitter followers
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Dr. Martens really hit it out of the park in 2018 with their social media strategy. They saw the true potential of Instagram and Facebook, designing a way to truly engage with their followers with a mix of brand produced photos and UGC that drove post engagement through the roof.

Ultimately, they became the best brand on social media in the UK, in 2018, according to Red Hot Penny's Social Scorecard that ranked 110 of the UK’s largest high street fashion and accessories chains.

251k Instagram followers | 2.2 million Facebook likes | 60.7k Twitter followers
Hostelworld were trying to position themselves as more than an accommodation service: they wanted to be a platform for travelers to create amazing new experiences around the world.

By targeting millennials, and using Olapic's Content Engine, Hostelworld were able to gather images of places and travelers from all over the globe and create an Instagram profile filled with wonderful colors, people and unique experiences that stargazed their whole community.

372k Instagram followers

In late 2018, Dior launched a secondary Instagram account, with only UGC photos selected and curated by Olapic's platform, dedicated to the self-proclaimed ‘Dior Beauty Lovers’. The goal was to give the users a place on Instagram to showcase their amazing content.

The initiative really paid off, achieving more than 3.000 likes in three days and today, after about 8 months, they have an astonishing 372k followers.

784k Instagram followers | 28 million Facebook likes | 41.9k Twitter followers
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IKEA has always been known as an excellent place to find great home furnishing products, so they designed the concept "Products in real homes", where real customers in real houses could share their beautiful spaces using #IKEAatmine.

The result is an awesome looking Instagram feed with balanced proportions of UGC photos, professionally produced images, stories with tips, and much more interesting content for followers.

5.3 million Instagram followers | 5.8 million Facebook likes | 218k Twitter followers

Since 1895, Swarovski has defined the world of premier jewelry and accessories with their quality products, and they knew that they needed quality content to have a strong online presence to spark buzz and boost passion in their products.

They started asking their users to share their photos on Instagram using the hashtags #FollowTheLight, #NoRegrets, and more, and using Olapic's Content Engine, Swarovski repurposed this content into stories and pictures in their Instagram feed. This way, they covered a wide spectrum of content (UGC, amazing product shots, campaign videos, mosaic, stories and much more) to make a fantastic Instagram feed.

REMEMBER...

It doesn't matter if you have 100k or 1 million followers, if you're smart about what, when and where you post, your engagement, likes, and followers will steadily begin to rise.