Originally published at thinktank.personagraph.com.

In 2006 Time Magazine chose “you” to be the Person of the Year. They chose “you” because in that year User Generated Content (UGC) websites like YouTube and Wikipedia really took off which was a strong indication of the empowered individual. Needless to say, UGC is a very powerful tool for a variety of purposes. There is power in numbers. A big audience can accomplish amazing things as a collective as is proven by the vast amount of (mostly reliable) information on Wikipedia. This crowd-sourcing of content for a website or an app is a very effective way of engaging an audience. Because what sort of user is more engaged than one that contributes his/her time and effort to make something for your app? Here are 5 ways developers can benefit from UGC.

1. Just for fun

You might recognize this as the slogan of the internet meme app and website 9GAG. The idea is as simple as it can be: you scroll through an endless stream of memes created and uploaded by users. This shows that you don’t have to invent the most ingenious app ever conceived, as long as it’s entertaining, it can become a hit. The same goes for the video app Vine. This simple app of making and sharing short videos got acquired by Twitter before it even publicly launched. Letting your users share funny content in your app makes for a great method to keep them coming back.

2. To expand your game

Probably the best example of this is Minecraft. In Minecraft, players can create their own custom maps for other people to play. There is an enormous freedom to build, destroy, fight and whatever else you’d like to do. Having the players of your game design levels and items for other users can make your game app grow rapidly and users have an almost endless supply of new stuff to play with. You can even hold competitions and reward those that conceive and share the best creations. An active community that returns to your app on a daily basis is thus achievable by giving your users the freedom to create their own gameplay.

3. Crowdsourcing your helpdesk

The beauty of today’s interconnected world is that you can get help everywhere and that people are (surprisingly) willing to help a fellow human being in need. When your app needs a little more explanation than the average app, allowing fellow users to help each other out can be a huge cost saver for you. Customer support is essentially done by other customers, how convenient is that? Having a forum where your users can meet and discuss things with each other is nothing new on the internet but doesn’t seem to be widely adopted in apps yet. Creating a forum in your app can stimulate interaction between like-minded people which increases engagement.

4. To crowdsource your app’s entire value offer

You can take letting users helping each other out to the next level and base your entire service on it. Countless travel apps, local apps, review and rating apps, media apps and many more derive their entire value of information and content generated by millions of willing users across the world. Why should you spend months or even years generating enough information to start a service while you can have thousands of people do it for you in just a matter of weeks? The trick is to give people the right incentive to share information with you and the rest of your user base.

5. For your social media engagement and contests

If your app is not that suitable for UGC you can always use social media as a tool to utilize it anyway. There are many examples of highly successful UGC campaigns, by both big and small companies across a variety of industries. Creativity is the crucial factor here, both by you as your engaged fans. With a little luck your contests goes (at least modestly) viral and reaches tons of people. Make sure you do something that is related to your app’s category and think about giving away a nice prize that offers real value to people. People that participate in these contests are your fans and will talk about you! These engaged users are vital for growing and sustaining an engaged user base.