Brands must drive as much user-generated content as possible, says Terry Peigh of IPG Group

In an interaction with BuzzInContent, Peigh, Managing Director, IPG Group, talks about the growing importance of user-generated content due to fall in consumers' trust in social media macro-influencers

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Akansha Srivastava
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Terry Peigh

Words like authenticity, trust, credibility and affinity always come coupled with user-generated content (UGC). The highest form of marketing is when consumers start talking about the brand and become the brand advocates proactively. Therefore, it’s a must to include UGC in the content strategy of brand.

According to Terry Peigh, Managing Director of the IPG Group, the key to excellent content marketing is to drive as much UGC as possible across platforms.

“Consumers want to learn about the products and tell others about it. They are looking for information. You have to feed them the information and encourage them to share the information. One can feed that information through content. Consumers will trust that information more than anything else. The key is to try to drive as much user-generated content as possible and put it in a place where consumers can find it and react to it.”

Also, one should keep in mind that not all UGC is good. It’s complicated to manage the quality of user-generated content. While UGC can build great brands, it can also bring down the reputation if the consumers start sharing negative information about it in their circles. Spillage is bound to happen. The content shared by consumers may not always be positive. But according to Peigh, that’s what transparency is all about. The brands must know how to react to negative UGC.

“If someone has shared some content on social media in the form of complaint and it has been responded to by the brand quickly and fully, it fetches more respect for the brand in the eyes of consumers based on how one dealt with it,” said Peigh.

Talking further about the importance of user-generated content, Peigh said that it is increasingly becoming important because the consumers’ trust in social media influencers is decreasing day by day. He said that according to a study done by FCB between 2017 and 2019, there is a significant drop in the number of people who said they bought something after being recommended by an influencer.

“The report depicts that the consumers are increasingly becoming wary of what comes to them from influencers because of the genuine concerns around the content they are promoting. For macro-influencers, there is also a trust deficit about the quality of their followers as well. Consumers are smart enough to understand that these influencers are being paid to promote the brand on social media. In comparison to that, UGC is much more genuine and believable,” added Peigh.

Peigh believes collaborating with micro- and nano-influencers is the way forward for the brands. He said most of the times nano- and micro-influencers pick and talk about the brand they genuinely like on their own. A lot of times, they are not paid to do that. Therefore, when they talk about the brand, the conversation becomes more genuine and trustworthy.

The only challenge working with nano- and micro-influencers is to manage the quality of content as they are inexperienced marketing people and in huge numbers. “It is not easy to teach them how to respond over the brand communications,” said Peigh.

Terry Peigh IPG Group