Last week, Amazon acquired Twitch, the platform for gamers who want to watch other gamers, well, game. This simple idea cost Amazon just under $1 billion. That gives you 1 billion reasons to sit up and start paying attention to user generated content.

Twitch isn’t offering a unique product. They are simply providing the connection between the viewer and their desired medium, without having to generate any actual content themselves. They can just lay back and roll around in their billions.

Now, whilst we all won’t be lucky enough to be Amazon, Google or Apple’s newest acquisition, there are a number of ways that you can implement user generated content into your digital marketing offering.

In fact, there’s a number of companies already doing it.

The ASP World Tour’s Snapchat

The ASP had a major overhaul this year, not just in the way they structured the World Tour of surfing, but also how their users consumed content. A new website along with a more structured way of webcasting competitions has resulted in a much better offering for surfing fans. The same goes for their social media channels, with ASP on Snapchat being particularly insightful.

The ASP will use Snapchat to run competitions and give backstage looks at what goes on at contests. At the recent US Open of Surfing, the ASP hid signed competitor jerseys around the event site and used Snapchat to give clues to their whereabouts. The result? A big jump in Snapchat followers and a few happy jersey winners (who also got some Snapchat airtime).

The ASP left it up to the users to fill their Snapchat seconds, and even those of us who weren’t at Huntington Beach, California were tuning in to see what happened.

#1888hotels

The 1888 Hotel in Sydney calls itself the world’s first “Instagram hotel”. They mark points around the hotel that are ‘perfect’ for Instagram photos and continually remind their guests to “share their experiences” online using #1888hotels and @8hotels.

They even provide iPads in rooms to ensure guests can “document” their stay. That equals more reviews and photos of their fantastic hotel online - two keys for succeeding in the accommodation game. It’s very little effort for hotel staff and an online bombardment for tourists looking for somewhere to stay in Sydney.

The Beautiful 92

Users of the London Underground have recently been exposed to adverts for #TheBeautiful92. The website provides images of football kits along with a subtle hint as to the team’s identity. It’s then up to the user to try and guess all 92, and then of course brag about their superior footballing knowledge to friends on Twitter and Facebook (which you need to use to sign in and ‘save’ your progress). This all coincided with the start of the Premier League football season. In other words, prime time.

So what are they trying to sell? Nothing directly. The Beautiful 92 is from creative agency Clinic, who created the site after receiving an open brief from a client on how to drive “social and extended engagement” from London Underground media space. Their answer was to bang together a simple website and let the users do the talking.

So, next time you are writing yet another article, hoping the globe will like it and share it, shelve the idea and let your users do it for you. Less work. More reward.

 

By Dylan Thomas, Digital Marketing Consultant.

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