Do you implement content moderation on your user-generated campaigns?
If not, it’s time you seriously rethink using content moderation when sharing User-Generated Content (UGC) for your marketing efforts.
86% of companies incorporate UGC in their marketing strategy, saying that it can help build trust and convey brand authenticity to customers.
While running a UGC campaign is one of the low-cost, high-ROI marketing tactics to grow your business, you can’t simply post any UGC across your marketing channels.
You’ll need a system to check and review UGC before sharing the content.
You must moderate submissions to ensure your brand is correctly represented while protecting your customers from offensive and inappropriate content.
Continue reading to learn more about the basics of content moderation and its critical role in implementing successful user-generated campaigns.
What is Content Moderation in UGC?
Content moderation refers to screening and filtering various user-generated content posted and shared online.
The main goal of content moderation in user-generated campaigns is to assess whether the shared content is appropriate for publishing based on predefined rules.
The types of content for monitoring can include videos, audio clips, texts, live streams, images, and even trending quotes on TikTok.
UGC categorized as inappropriate can vary depending on the target audiences and specific platforms.
However, illegal and harmful content should always be blocked regardless of the platform, website hosting service, or users.
A content moderation process can include the following:
- Proactive moderation
Pre-moderation or proactive moderation is when you edit or reject UGC before publishing.
- Post moderation
UGC you review after it goes live (or published) is known as post moderation.
- Reactive moderation
In reactive moderation, other users can flag inappropriate content for you or your content moderator to remove.
- Real-time automated moderation
Automated moderation involves Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning technology that can automatically accept, reject, or send UGC to human moderators based on the platform’s rules and guidelines.
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The Importance of Content Moderation
Running user-generated campaigns is an excellent way to boost your brand’s exposure and customer retention efforts, whether you sell jewelry or offer life coach certification programs.
The catch is that UGC marketing means (usually) unaffiliated users are responsible for the content’s tone, narrative, and other elements.
Without proper supervision, inappropriate UGC can slip through, potentially ruining your brand’s image and the user experience.
That is why you need content moderation, including the five other reasons below.
1. Improve your online visibility
UGC moderation allows you to pick out and amplify the content types that align with your brand and company values.
It can help boost your brand’s online visibility across popular online publishing platforms, such as your website and social media channels.
Also, it helps convey your branding to your target audience, exposing your business to more people and increasing your engagement opportunities.
One way of moderating brand-related UGC is to work with influencers to drive your user-generated campaigns and expand your reach.
For instance, you can do sponsored partnership posts with influencers and famous people in your industry or niche.
It’s a great way to tap into online personalities your audiences are already interested in to share content about your brand.
It can also inspire more people to create content that puts your brand, products, and services in a positive light.
2. Protect users and your brand
One way of keeping your UGC campaigns above board is to actively monitor user content submissions to your site, whether they are videos, photos, or blog comments.
You need to determine how authentic and appropriate UGC is since you have no direct control over its production.
Doing so helps ensure that the UGC doesn’t stray away from what your brand represents and considers appropriate.
Like how running a GitHub backup can keep your business-critical codes and data intact, you need content moderation to maintain your brand and users’ integrity.
Check user profiles, images, videos, links within posts, and replies to spot harmful content and remove them. Flag inappropriate content if posted on social media.
Consider designating content moderators to filter users’ illegal, explicit, or offensive posts. It helps keep these types of content from getting uploaded on your website or tied to your social media accounts.
Content moderation puts you in a better position to enforce established guidelines. It helps ensure users don’t violate any rules with the content they post and share.
As a result, you’ll have a more positive environment that promotes engaging freely with other users without the chance of getting exposed to inappropriate content.
Plus, offering a safe space for all users to share the right content can boost your business’s credibility, helping you build customer trust.
3. Understand your users and their thoughts about your brand
Leverage user-generated content moderation to uncover patterns. It also helps you find valuable opportunities, especially when running high-volume campaigns.
Tag and sort submitted UGC based on specific properties, including viewer attitudes toward your brand, thoughts, and other factors.
You can track reviews, feedback, and comments (positive and negative) to understand your customers’ needs. It can also help you learn how your customers use your product.
Of course, being proactive is always better but you cannot always control when you will receive feedback. When you collect reviews or comments, whether they’re positive or negative, you want to adopt a reactive marketing approach. Pass this information on to your marketing team to extract actionable insights into user behaviors, which can help improve your branding efforts.
You can also leverage insights, especially user sentiment, to help fuel your small business SEO strategy.
You’ll get valuable information to double down on improving your web page’s visibility and ranking in organic search.
4. Increase your organic traffic and raise your search ranking
Moderating UGC is crucial to increasing your organic traffic and raising your Google Search Engine Results (SERPs) ranking.
Why? Because you can leverage positive UGCs, such as customer testimonials and reviews, to showcase real and valuable content on your website.
The more relevant and genuine your content is, the higher the chances your web pages rise to the top of the SERPs rankings.
To find the gems of customer feedback and reviews, you’ll need to moderate your UGCs to pick the ones that can help champion your brand, products, and services.
Moderate UGC and find the best content to convey real-life experiences from happy customers via reviews.
It can provide relevant information to your website visitors, draw in more traffic, and boost your web page and brand’s visibility.
5. Scale your UGC campaigns
User-generated content can be powerful materials to amplify your marketing campaigns. Pro tip: encourage customers to generate user-generated video content because it can have an even better impact!
Content moderation gives you a robust system to filter out content that can negatively impact your brand and users. It helps you scale your UGC and other marketing campaigns seamlessly.
For instance, if you regularly run contests requiring participants to submit UGCs, moderating submissions allow you to check and review the content easily.
You won’t likely need to hire more people to review your content since you have established guidelines.
Content moderation helps make scaling your marketing efforts more practical and cost-efficient.
Improve your brand’s exposure with UGC content moderation!
UGC Moderation Best Practices
There are countless ways to leverage UGC for your marketing campaigns, but develop your content moderation strategy with these tips before you do.
- Determine your user-generated campaign goals and expectations before you start implementation.
Also, identify the best-fitting networks for your campaigns to help align your strategies with their existing guidelines.
- Amplify real customer voices and not just brand-related ones to promote authenticity and convey relatable content. Potential customers are more likely to view and respond to content that appears genuine.
- Provide clear instructions about your expectations from people interested in sharing content. Specify if contributors need to submit a photo, include a hashtag, and other rules and regulations for UGC.
- Make the most of your UGC campaigns by preparing supporting material. For example, create a content library to match the submitted content with relevant hashtags.
- Build a social wall or a feed of posts from various social media platforms. You can use it to gather and turn your brand’s social content into your content curation hub.
- Engage users and moderate the conversation. Doing so can help you better connect with your users and simplify monitoring their submissions.
- Encourage people to share their featured content on other social media platforms.
It allows you to show appreciation to people who share UGC while getting more eyeballs on your brand-related posts and other user-generated content.
- Plan your contests and rewards to provide incentives to people who create UGC as part of your campaign.
Final Words About Moderating UGC to Optimize Your Campaigns
UGC campaigns can amplify your online marketing efforts but need proper monitoring and review to work effectively.
Understand content moderation and why it’s important to help you develop the best approach to moderating your user-generated campaigns.
Once you nail UGC moderation, you’ll have a cost-effective marketing approach that helps your brand maintain a credible and trustworthy online image.
It can also help you understand customer behavior better and keep up with constantly changing consumer expectations to improve your existing and future campaigns.
Growth Hackers is an award-winning digital marketing and growth hacking agency helping businesses from all over the world grow. There is no fluff with Growth Hackers. We help entrepreneurs and business owners use content moderation to boost their brand’s exposure, increase their productivity, generate qualified leads, optimize their conversion rate, gather and analyze data analytics, acquire and retain users and increase sales. We go further than brand awareness and exposure. We make sure that the strategies we implement move the needle so your business grow, strive and succeed. If you too want your business to reach new heights, contact Growth Hackers today so we can discuss about your brand and create a custom growth plan for you. You’re just one click away to skyrocket your business.
