You may be surprised to learn that Generation Z (born between 1997 and 2013) makes up approximately 30% of the world’s population (2.4 billion people) and has an estimated global purchasing power of US$853 billion. Can marketers reliably reach, interact with, and guide this influential market segment toward purchasing decisions while fostering brand loyalty and business growth?
Gen Z and social media: usage and behavior
As the first fully digital generation, Gen Z has an active presence online, especially on social media.
Considering how active they are on social media, the average attention span of Gen Z is just 8 seconds, so brands need to create engaging and relevant content. But despite being digital natives, 73% of Gen Z still prefer shopping in physical stores and value the tangible experiences they provide. Interestingly, 97% use social media as a discovery tool for reviews and price comparisons, and 40% use TikTok instead of Google for searches. Furthermore, 83% of Gen Zers shop on social media, resulting in 60% discovering new brands and 32% making a purchase.
To take advantage of these behaviors, marketers need to integrate social media into their broader marketing strategy and ensure it aligns with their SEO and SEM efforts.
The importance of user-generated content (UGC) for Gen Z
Brands that are successful in capturing Gen Z’s attention focus on user-generated content (UGC), or authentic, free content created by fans, customers, and users. UGC plays an important role in purchasing decisions, with 70% of Gen Z citing UGC as an influential factor. Content most likely to drive purchases includes reviews, wholesale, and “Get Ready With Me” (GRWM) videos.
5 tips for generating and managing UGC
How can brands ensure a successful UGC strategy that resonates with Gen Z? Below are five valuable tips for successfully engaging Gen Z on social media.
1. Promote community management
Cultivate a diverse and inclusive community that reflects your audience, especially Gen Z. Representation matters – if your audience sees themselves in your brand’s message, they’re more likely to create and engage with your content. Actively engage with your audience and build a sense of collaboration. Authentic conversations and feedback foster deeper connections and can turn loyal followers into brand advocates. In fact, over 40% of Gen Z are motivated to champion brands they love. Brands that know how to cultivate a community with their followers, existing users, and potential users will earn their audience’s loyalty and win your business.
2. Use engagement tactics to create UGC
Boost content creation by providing prompts like unique hashtags, contests, and employee engagement programs. “Consider your own hashtags, contests, or even employee engagement programs,” says Rebecca Steckham, director of social media and strategic partnerships and subject matter expert (SME) at Tag Social Media Center of Excellence. he suggests. Employee-generated content (EGC) has twice the engagement of brand messages and eight times the engagement when shared by employees themselves. This is something that companies like Microsoft and SAP have discovered and benefited from.
It’s important to track relevant hashtags and keywords to find the right content and offer products and discounts to users to increase brand loyalty.
3. Prioritize reliability
Make sure your UGC aligns with your brand values and resonates with your audience. Gen Z easily detects fraud and is quick to turn away from brands that lack transparency. In fact, 45% have boycotted a brand they think is misleading. Demonstrating transparency to build trust while acting with integrity is critical for brands looking to build loyalty and drive growth with Gen Z customers.
4. Adopt time-saving technology
Streamline your UGC management with marketing technology (MarTech) tools. Platforms like Tag’s unique Digital Interact (DI) streamline the entire campaign workflow, reducing the time from brief to campaign delivery, no matter where you are in the world.
5. Set clear UGC campaign goals
Define measurable goals, such as increasing brand awareness, increasing engagement rates, or driving direct actions such as purchases. Align success metrics based on campaign objectives and work with your sales team to track the entire customer journey. A more detailed “funnel” approach to consider is:
Top of the Funnel: Is the campaign aimed at increasing brand awareness? If so, the success of the campaign will be determined based on previous campaigns and performance periods compared to competitors (rather than just looking at impressions or reach). It could mean more impressions compared to , or more voice within a particular topic. Mid-funnel: Here, campaign success means an increase in overall content engagement rates. However, the tag Social Media Center of Excellence for Small and Medium Enterprises gives brands the ability to “prioritize” and prioritize performance metrics such as comments, shares, saves, and site click-throughs that social media platforms’ algorithms place more emphasis on. We recommend that you focus on Lower Funnel: Success at this stage should mean a real increase in consumer intent and direct action. For example, ask, “How many people are participating in my contest?” How many people are downloading my content? How many people are contacting my sales team to get more information or to schedule a call? Try and buy my products How many people are doing this?’ Also, at this stage, consider expanding your knowledge and understanding beyond your immediate social media KPIs and metrics. “Working with sales operations teams to collect and measure other non-social aspects of consumer behavior gives them a complete picture,” said Stephen Glasco, Tag Americas sr. I’ll give you some advice. Director of Social Media and Social Media Center of Excellence SME.
The importance of social media and UGC for Gen Z consumers
Given the different characteristics of the Gen Z consumer audience, including frequent use of social media to stay informed and make purchasing decisions, brands are making the most of social media and incorporating UGC to improve their branding. It is logical to use it to help promote your message. In summary, we can see that:
Social media is an ideal channel to target Gen Z consumers. User-generated content (UGC) on social media has a huge impact on Gen Z’s purchasing decisions.
The five UGC tips in this article are: 1) Employ community management, 2) Leverage engagement strategies, 3) Focus on authenticity, 4) Deploy technology that saves time and effort, 5 ) Set goals, your brand will succeed. Use UGC campaigns to increase engagement, influence purchases, and drive brand loyalty and overall business growth with a growing and influential Gen Z audience.
Contact us to learn how Tag can help you optimize and accelerate your social media content creation and campaign workflows.
Tag Social Media Center of Excellence provides end-to-end social media marketing, from strategic planning and consulting to social media management, paid marketing and influencer marketing. Our experienced, socially savvy subject matter experts enable Tag to manage what most brands would have difficulty achieving on their own. This means staying up-to-date on social media and social media trends and leveraging a variety of platform products to create engaging, relevant, and informative content. The latest digital content production technology. Tag has created an efficient delivery model, using the right resources in the right areas of expertise at the right time.
