How To Get Customers To Post Photos On Social Media | 3 Actionable Tips
How to get customers to post photos on social media should be a key part of any B2C strategy. Consumers trust user-generated content (UGC) more than branded content. In fact, 76% of consumers believe the content that average people share, is more honest than advertising from brands (AdWeek, 2017). It’s seen as more authentic — like word-of-mouth and is a natural fit in a user’s social media feed. As opposed to ads, which interrupt updates from friends and family.
Did you know?
The average person now consumes between, 2,000–5,000 brand exposures per day. Consumers notice a mere 153 of these brand exposures — and only remember 12! (HubSpot, 2017). Thus, making the competition for your target market’s attention even tougher! By gaining a clear understanding of how to get customers to post photos on social media, you’ll a greater ROI, recall, and conversion rates.
How Customers’ Photos Are Better Than Ads To Build Brand Awareness
With organic reach declining to as little as 2%, (Social@Ogilvy), and more people using ad-blockers. Raising brand awareness is a challenge. But customer-generated content is a great, cost-effective method to boost brand awareness. Its recall is high because it’s shared from trusted peers-to-peers, like word-of-mouth and online reviews.
Photos posted by customers help acquire new customers through content discovery. For example, when someone is considering visiting a restaurant, they’ll often check it out on Instagram. The content shared under a brand’s hashtags can make or break purchase decisions. Or ignite interest and intent in passive users, who happen to be browsing on the platform.
3 Tips On How To Get Customers To Post Photos On Social Media
There are many factors that contribute to a customer’s decision to post, or not to post about your brand on social media. For example:
- Customer service/satisfaction
- Customer personality type
- If the customer is an influencer/blogger and their personal brand
- Whether or not you offer free WiFi in your stores
- If customers know you’d like them to share photos
The blueprint on how to get customers to post photos on social media lies in the following 3 tips.
#1. Make It Easy To Capture Great Content
The easier it is to capture great content, the more of your customers will share it on social media. So it’s important to present your products as best you can, i.e. ensure they look aesthetically pleasing. Provide good lighting, whether it’s a restaurant, gym, or dressing room.
For food businesses, when developing your products, consider how ‘instagramable’ their design is. The goal is to make the audience’s mouths water. Think — beautifully garnished salads and delicate desserts. Something that looks irresistibly delicious, like a chocolate fondant, melted cheese, or pretty latte art.
It also helps to be funny! It can boost brand affinity and makes customers comfortable to engage with your brand.
For fashion and beauty, products can turn into sensations on Instagram. Just think of bath bombs, body scrubs, lipsticks, sheet and charcoal masks. Thousands of photos, videos, and Boomerangs of these products get posted to Instagram. They’re all prettily packaged and are fun to see in action — and really easy to get a great shot of!
#2. Provide Creative Incentives With Social Rewards
Sometimes, we all need a little push. Social rewards and contests act as a motivator for people who may be on the fence about posting to social media.
Sober Lane, a restaurant bar chain and Popdeem client reached #1 Food & Lifestyle App on the App Store, surpassing Pizza Hut. They also doubled their social engagement by using Popdeem to reward customers for sharing in-store photos on social media. Check out their case study here.
You should strive to be clever and creative with your rewards. For example, by rewarding customers with discounts, you encourage repeat purchases. You can deliver instant rewards to customers in exchange for social actions with Popdeem. Click here if you’d like to request a free demo.
A real world example of what you can achieve with contests, comes from the Cheetos Museum campaign.
Cheetos invited customers to submit photos of Cheetos, that look like things! The winner’s prize was $10,000. The campaign resulted in a crowd-sourced, curated museum of 127,717 Cheetos. With one customer selling a Cheeto that looked like Harambe for a staggering $100,000 on eBay! The campaign was a resounding success, resulting in the brand’s highest sales week ever.
Another Popdeem client, Heine Brothers’ Coffee in Kentucky identified charity, as a shared value among their customers. In fact, more than a third of all consumers (36.5%) actively seek out brands that donate to certain causes (AdWeek, 2017). Heine Brothers’ Coffee got creative with Popdeem’s social rewards creator and donates 25c to charity when a customer checks-in at Hikes Point.
This activity not only strengthens Heine Brothers’ as a brand with a purpose and fulfilling their corporate social responsibilities. It’s also an incentive that really resonates with today’s consumer — being able to support a cause, simply by sharing a photo from their local coffee store.
#3. Encourage Engagement
Customers like to feel valued. And if they share a post about your brand with their network and you don’t engage back with them, they’ll be less likely to post again. Instead, write them a unique and personalized reply to their post, complementing their post and thanking them for sharing. Not only will this make them likely to post again. But it will strengthen the customer-brand relationship. Making the customer feel special, valued, and improve brand loyalty. Which also has a knock-on effect on other people who see the post — i.e. their friends, family, and followers.
An example of a brand who has executed this well is Sony with PlayStation. Check out what they did in the video below.
Another way to encourage your customers to post photos on social media is to include a branded hashtag in your promotional materials, on your packaging, and in your stores. You can also surprise and delight customers who have shared content about your brand with gifts, or a personal thank you note.
It’s all about encouraging social sharing and making the most out of engagement opportunities to build relationships and brand affinity.
Interested In How To Get Customers To Post Photos On Social Media?
If you’re interested in how to get customers to post photos on social media, then check out Popdeem’s pioneering software that does just that. It includes features like targeted social rewards, influencer targeting, loyalty program integrations, and analytics. The solution is white-labeled, fully customizable, and can be added to any existing app in 15 minutes.
Request a free Popdeem demo with one of our social engagement experts at the link below.
This post originally appeared on The Social Insider — by Popdeem.
