User generated content is like the holy grail of marketing. When you get customers to actively create and share content about your brand, it becomes an invaluable source of free advertising and PR on an ongoing basis.
We’ve all heard about the well-known examples of Starbucks or other hipster coffee places with #instagramworthy interiors. But what if you make your product in such a way that people are so amazed that they highlight the product itself by taking a picture every single time?
A couple of years ago on one of my many travels, I came across an ice cream store called Amorino. There are a few things that I noticed while I was waiting in the gelateria:
- There was a line (with genuine queue barriers) since it was always busy
- The ice cream was good, but not exceptional
- People in line were discussing which ice cream they were going to pick. But to my greatest surprise it wasn’t about the flavours, it was all about which colours to choose
When I saw the first ice cream cones come out, I finally understood why. Instead of having two scoops, the ice cream flavours were perfectly shaped, like the petals of a flower. For the most Instagram-worthy picture, it was imperative to pick the right colour as the base, combined with a different colour in the petals.
80% of the customers in the store made sure to photograph the ice cream cone, before even tasting the ice cream. That the content gets shared is apparent. While the brand has “only” 76K followers on their own social media account @amorinogelato , they have a massive amount of user generated content on #amorino with 100.000+ posts and 41.876 posts on #amorinogelato. And this is only on Instagram! If you would calculate all the pics on all social media, you’ll easily surpass an amount of 500.000. At an average of 150 followers per account, their content has a reach of around 7.500.000!
So next time you are trying to get users to share content about your product: Surprise them, amaze them, make it #instaworthy #foodporn and make sure it is so good that they’ll keep coming back for more!
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