According to a report from MarketingSherpa, user-generated content should be at the forefront of your SEO strategies. Creating content has proven to help both B2C as well as B2B companies. Many companies are using their audience to help them to create content and rise in the search rankings.
In the report from the company, Coffee for Less urged their customer to create reviews on their products purchased. In Q4 of 2011, Coffee for Less experienced 125% higher conversion rate for visitors who interacted with them, 157% higher time-on-site for visitors who interacted with them, and 111% higher page-views-per-visit for those who interacted with them.
How did Cofee for Less do it?
Coffee for Less made reviews search-friendly. They let users include multimedia in reviews for more visibility to search engines. They let them create deeper reviews with more keywords like aroma, body, color, and acidity. They ranked reviews and allowed voting to keep the top ones higher.
They moderated their reviews to reduce offensive language. Also they remove reviews about the customers experience rather than the product itself, then contact the customer. They do not however remove negative reviews about products.
Coffee for Less teaches their customers how to write a great review by giving them instructions and examples. Those good examples will appear in their emails or social media outlets to display for customers.
They periodically encourage customers to review their products using sweepstakes, email, and post-conversion emails. Coffee for Less has over 10,000 likes on Facebook and they auto-tweet customer reviews that are three beans (their version of stars) or higher. On the product review they provide a Facebook sharing feature to generate more social reach among the user’s friends.
Other ways to Generate Content
Make it obvious to users what your site/company is selling. Use descriptions that are unique included related content on your site.
Make them aware of your products, services, and provide information about them.
Allow visitors to post video or images that relate to your company. Maybe run sweepstakes for people using your product. Make sure either their content or yours includs good keywords and has accurate descriptions.
Much like customer reviews let readers and customers submit an article for you to publish. These can be related to your industry or products and make sure the topics are timely and relevant. This could be utilized with social media as well.
If you use manufactured products rewrite their descriptions. Make them unique to your audience and make them useful. Rewriting them can give you a boost with little effort for new content.
Add you own helpful DIY video or images that can be useful for your products as well as engage them into sharing it with like-minded customers.
Social media has a large part in generating content and here is a great info-graphic on the “Rise of Content Marketing”.
Increase your Online Marketing exposure in 2012 with the above tips and contact us if you need assistance.
