5 Ways to Reuse Influencer-Generated Content

User-generated content has become a part of every marketing strategy.

As brands dive deeper into the influencer pool, working with content creators to reach and engage their audience, one area remains challenging to navigate — what is the right way to use the content created by the influencers or content creators?

When a brand works with influencers to produce a video or other content, it’s essential to know how to use the content to generate more sales or increase brand awareness once the content is created.

Marketers often have questions about reusing influencer-generated content across other channels. Hence, this article will discuss 5 ways to reuse influencer-generated content and a few examples of famous brands that have successfully implemented this strategy.

What is IGC? Influencer-Generated Content Meaning

Influencer-generated content is something that’s been gaining popularity for some time now. Businesses use social media influencers to organically promote their products and services, helping them get real exposure to the audience they need. But what is influencer-generated content, and why is it becoming so popular?

Briefly explained, influencer-generated content is when an influencer creates a piece of unique content for your brand.

For example, this can be a tweet, an Instagram post, a YouTube video, a blog post, or any other type of content suitable to your business needs and successfully testifies about your brand or specific product and services.

Furthermore, by repurposing this content on your site, you can reach more people, get them involved, and build authority simultaneously.

How To Repurpose Influencer-Generated Content

Reuse, reduce, recycle. You’ve heard of that, right? The good news is that besides helping the environment, those practices can bring great results when applied in marketing as well.

The first thing you need to do is to find an influencer suitable to your brand and get an excellent piece of influencer-generated content. However, you must be sure that the influencer’s audience is your target audience as well. The bigger your influencer’s following, the more people will see your post and hopefully click through to learn more about your product.

Next, decide where you will publish your content. Will you post it on social media, your website, print media, ads, or somewhere else? Don’t be afraid to reuse the content in multiple ways in multiple places as long as it fits the platform. This will help keep that great content circulating so more people can see it over time.

Finally, as with every other marketing strategy, measure and analyze the results to measure ROI and find points of improvement to achieve the goal of your content strategy.

Benefits of Influencer-Generated Content

The world of content marketing has changed thanks to the relationship between brands and influencers, and nowadays, influencer-generated content has become a new form of digital marketing.

Besides the fact that influencers can sway opinions and be instrumental in the purchase decision-making process of their audience, many other benefits are great reasons to start reusing influencer-generated content from now on.

It doesn’t cost a fortune, and it’s not time-consuming

Many consider influencer-generated content comparable to the quality of studio content. What’s more, IGC is more diverse and engaging than studio content that will cost your business a fortune.

Moreover, apart from the fact that it is less time-consuming, negotiating image rights to an influencer’s content is drastically more cost-effective than a full-blown professional studio shoot.

Influencer-generated content is high-performing

Influencer content comes from people who have already cultivated an engaged audience and at least some brand trust. Hence, influencer-generated content is ideal for getting more attention and increasing engagement.

Authentic and reliable content

In today’s oversaturated market, brands are putting a lot of effort into being authentic to stand out from the crowd, but this is easier said than done.

Thus, instead of spending time and money finding your brand authenticity, you can leverage the opportunities of influencer-generated content and entice new customers with unique voices and perspectives.

Also, people trust people they can identify with. Since every influencer is unique in their own way, collaborating with more than one means you’ll have diverse content that can attract diverse audiences interested in your brand.

Higher ROI

Influencer marketing and influencer-generated content have one of the highest ROIs of any marketing channel because they are not overpaid. When implementing IGC, your conversions go up throughout the purchase path.

Even though the costs are lower, the returns will be higher while IGC is a part of your content creation process.

You can establish social proof.

Influencers are considered experts in a specific niche. Therefore, working with influencers that are experts in your niche, you can benefit from the spillover effect on their reputation on your brand.

Reusing such influencer-generated content will reinforce this effect and boost your brand reputation.

It’s easier to target buyers along the customer sales funnel

The buyer’s journey has three stages: awareness, consideration, and purchasing decisions. So, you can leverage repurposing influencer-generated content on different channels and take the opportunity to provide your potential customers with authentic and trustworthy testimonials throughout this process.

5 ways to reuse influencer-generated content

Once you’ve picked the best micro-influencers and selected the top pieces of influencer content, let’s discuss what you can do. These are the 5 best ways to repurpose content from influencers into further marketing efforts.

One thing that applies to all is remembering not to repost the same content in different channels. Instead, consider using written content and visual content differently on another channel.

Use Influencer-Generated Content in Ads

Repurposing quality influencer-generated content for advertising is a gold mine for any marketer. Using IGC for your ad visuals, you attract people who are more likely to convert since you are gaining trust with authentic content.

To be more specific, according to Salesforce, ads that feature IGC or UGC have 5x higher CTR than ads with less authentic content.

Start by setting a specific goal

Whether you aim to increase traffic to your website, get more sales, or get more subscribers, you must decide your goal before everything else.

And in most cases, the brands start with a measurable goal that will set the pace for future collaboration. This goal can be simple as getting new followers from the collaboration or getting more sales with the discount code that the influencer used in the campaign.

Next, choose the actual content

This next and probubly the most important step is to choose which pieces of content you want to promote and how you will repurpose them. The possibilities are endless, hence, do your research and find out which are the best posts to achieve your goal, and think about the format of the video or image you’ll use in the final ad. It might be necessary to make some changes, so make sure you have the resources and skills to do that.

Pick the right social media channels

In marketing, the world is always spinning around your target audience. Hence, to have a successful advertising strategy, you must be sure which channels your current, and future audiences are most using. Knowing where they spend most of their time and where they are most engaging plays a significant role in this strategy.

An excellent example of a brand that leverages the opportunities of IGC content is Gisou.

By posting a video of an influencer using their product and showing that she is satisfied with the final result, they give their followers a taste of the product’s benefits and encourage them to buy it.

In addition, before you place your ad, there is one game-changer tactic you need to implement to achieve mind-blowing results.

The most effective practice to get the most from influencer-generated content ads is setting up influencer whitelisting.

Influencer whitelisting is when brands are doing paid ads on social media, but instead of coming from the brand’s account, it’s coming from the influencer’s account and identity.

This way, brands can schedule, fund, and track ads like usual, but the ad will be displayed as the content published from the influencer’s profile.

The brand is still the one writing the copy and choosing the content, but instead of running ads saying “buy our products” or “use our services,” brands can make sales by having trustworthy testimonial ads with a clear call-to-action button.

Moreover, this method is excellent for brands that want to spice up their advertising strategy to target and convert new audiences more effectively.

Use Influencer-Generated Content on Website

Testimonials and reviews are among the strongest forms of recommendation for every brand. Additionally, reviews from influencers that already have the trust of the specific audience are a recommendation you must promote on your website.

Using influencer-generated content on your website will boost your credibility and gain the trust of your audience; therefore, let’s dive into a few tips to help you feature this type of content successfully.

Suppose you have influencer-generated content from more than one influencer. In that case, you can make a separate website section where you will showcase the experience influencers have using your product or services. You can post IGC in the form of videos or text reviews and quotes.

A great example of a brand using influencer-generated content on a website is Marucci. They are using a testimonial from Francisco Lindor and his photo and “See more” CTA that redirects users to more testimonials from influencers relevant to their brand.

Use Influencer-Generated Content in Print Media

Influencer-generated content is a great fit for print media as well. Magazines and newspapers need authentic content more than ever since the visuals they use often look staged, and it’s hard for readers to connect with it.

On the other hand, using influencer content to advertise in print infomercials increases credibility. Adding testimonials of trusted influencers is just an extra tactic that will straighten your strategy.

Use Influencer-Generated Content in Newsletter and Customer Emails

Email marketing is either underrated or marketers who know its worth are struggling to get people to click through on their email campaigns. Fortunately, for those who want to leverage the opportunities of email marketing, using influencer-generated content is a tried and tested way to create an attractive email campaign.

You can implement influencer-generated content in newsletters and customer emails simply by using real names, faces and stories, and testimonials of influencers. That way, the content of your email will become more convincing and attention-grabbing compared to traditional emails.

Moreover, if you have a segmented mailing list, you can target the customers with influencers that suit their style and norms. Therefore, you can spice up your email strategy with the ultimate social proof from influencer-generated content.

GAP is one of the many brands that use influencer-generated content as a part of their email camp ign. Since they are a fashion brand, simply posting pictures of influencers styling their products is enough. No need for additional testimonials or influencer reviews. They give people precisely what they need – an idea of how to style GAP products.

Outdoor Signage

Even though the days of billboards and storefront signage seem like they’re gone for good, when used the right way, they are still one of the most effective marketing strategies.

Like with the tactics mentioned above, when using influencer-generated content in outdoor signage, in-store promotions, and other offline mediums, more customers can identify with your branded content at every touchpoint.

A great example of a brand with a solid offline marketing strategy is Glossier. Even if you are not a fan of makeup, there’s not a chance you haven’t heard o it. And that’s the case, thanks to their strong online and offline brand presence.

By repurposing the exact content they share on their Instagram and website onto Billboards across the country, this brand connects with their online audience in real life.

They know that featuring influencers, beauty gurus, and real customers instead of highly photoshopped top models on billboards will resonate with a broader audience.

Speaking of innovative ways to use influencer-generated content, we can’t go without discussing this super cool billboard by Apple. The billboard on the image above is a part of Apple’s campaign “Shot on iPhone Challenge” that was intended to highlight the functionality of its iPhone cameras by showing images photographers captured using their phones.

They’ve partnered with the National Hockey League to showcase the raw and organic images that fan-favorite players (influencers) take on their phones.

This partnership brought out-of-home and digital experiences together by doing a simultaneous Instagram story campaign that gave hockey fans “day in the life” style content featuring their favorite players.

Tools to Generate Influencer Content

You have two options when it comes to generating influencer con ent. The first one is to build up a relationship with influencers by yourself, and the second is to use a platform or an agency to do that to dedicate yourself to your primary work.

If you decide to do it by yourself, follow a proven guide to find influencers on each platform to find influencers in your niche quickly.

However, if you choose to get help, five tools are excellent for generating influencer content.

Upfluence

Upfluence is a full-scale influencer platform that helps you make the most of your campaigns, from research to outreach. With a massive database of over 3 million influencer profiles, this tool offers a well-rounded set of features aimed at helping you create content, research influencers, and directly engage with them to generate more brand awareness and sales leads.

Aspire

Aspire is a community intelligence marketing platform built for advocacy. They see your community as the best influencers of all–like-minded customers, creatives, professionals, experts, employees, and brand representatives who share similar values and passion tied to your brand beyond the product or service you sell.

EmbedSocial

EmbedSocial developed EmbedFeed – an innovative platform that allows you to embed Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter feeds on your website, blog, or a specific campaign URL.

The aggregator can be used to create interactive and engaging hashtag walls where customers can see all the social proof for your brand in one place. It also offers customization options that ensure each branded hashtag wall is unique and in line with the overall brand tone communicated on the website.

Influence.co

Influence.co is an influencer marketplace, but it also functions as a social network for brands and influencers to find and connect with each o her. To date, Influence.co has nearly 250,000 members — including over 140,000 influencers, 60,000 brands, and 30,000 other users who aren’t either of the above.

Hunter.io

Hunter.io Is a powerful tool for finding email addresses, and it’s beneficial for marketers looking to contact key influencers. Enter a name and domain into Hunter.io, and you can find the email address of any person working at that company and details such as social profiles and company structure.

FAQ about Influencer-Generated Content

Until now, you have every step of the way to having an overstanding IGC marketing strategy. However, if you are still confused with some parts of the process, here are a few FAQs you might be interested in.