If you need a surefire way to keep your fan base and interested and growing, having your fans contribute to what you post can give you exponential reach and traffic.
Eye-catching and vibrant images will stand out most in your fans social feeds, but getting pictures like that is easier said than done. However, there are more ways to get stunning pictures than just brand-generated content, and one of the best ways is asking your fans to create images for you. With this avenue of content creation, there is a much higher chance of growth in traffic through their own marketing of their picture and their friends.
Here are some examples of brands who successfully used their fans to grow their traffic:
- Fan Photos
Tourism Australia asked their fans to use their #seeaustralia hashtag on all their pictures of Australia to show the amazing natural beauty of the island nation. The company tracked the hashtag to find and highlight fan photos, and then posted the best pictures on their Facebook page. They are still receiving over 1,000 pictures a day and have a huge Facebook page with almost 5.5 million fans.
- Real-Time Sharing
Diving company Pro Dive Cairns runs three-day dive trips where divers eat and sleep on a premium dive vessel. They have free wifi on their boats to encourage divers and crew to share their experience on social media.
They also take a group picture right before starting the trip and tell everyone to tag and share the picture to show friends and family.
Tagging pictures is crucial because it immediately sends the pictures to several peoples news feeds where in turn their friends can see, like and share the pictures with their friends.
To keep momentum going, Pro Dive Cairns highlights and shares great photos and experiences posted by customers, giving them a virtual high-five.
- Follow Your Fans’ Lead
Stylist Nikki Parkinson runs the popular blog Styling You, and has a huge reach on social media through her use of hashtags. In November 2013, what started as a simple fan-requested picture of her day-to-day outfit became a daily hashtag event to show off all her fans outfits.
Using #everydaystyle, Nikki creates a collage every week, using outfits she, her fans and other fashion bloggers have put together, then shares that visual content on her blog, Facebook and Instagram.
By engaging her fans in her own hashtags, Nikki saw a 25% increase in engagement and shares on her Facebook page.
All these brands have seen success with crowdsourcing content from fans, so now it’s your turn. How can you one up the competition?