Most marketing people will tell you the gold is in third-party generated content. For chambers, that means content produced by your members or members of your community.
While ideally, you’d find positive comments and reviews said by them about you, it needn’t all be just about you. It could also be quality content your members produced that would be of benefit to your audience.
Nothing sways others in quite the same way as someone not on the payroll talking about you. But how do you make that happen? Follow these steps:
Attract More Member-Generated Content
- Remind people of your hashtag. You can’t do this enough. Okay, you probably can, but it’s a lot harder to do than you think. Place your hashtag on all image quotes, social media posts, and even on your website. The more you use it, the less others will have to remember it. They’ll be so used to seeing it, usage will come naturally when referring to you.
- Host a contest. Member-generated content doesn’t have to be all about you or purely written. You can entice them to submit things about your town as well. Social media contests like photo contests are great engagement tools and they give your chamber tons of content you can use for all sorts of purposes. Just make sure that you ask for rights when they submit to you.
- Share good content. Create lists of your members’ social media profiles so you can quickly scan them each day. Share the posts you think your audience would find value in. Content curation is an ideal way to fill up your content calendar.
- Invite them to share their experiences. Invite members to share their experiences with others by writing reviews on social media or publishing their testimonials (always ask first). You can also use quotes from surveys or record them on a video. Most people are willing to share their positive experiences but if you don’t ask them to, it might be something they never get around to on their own.
- Establish a resource library. You can create a resource library on your chamber website with articles written by local subject matter experts. They needn’t be written for your website. You can ask to use pieces already published. If you build the library, market it, and frame it as an exclusive opportunity to show off their knowledge, people may look at it as the “place to be seen.” Finally, make sure you have content in there from all of your session speakers. This allows people to network and be helpful even when there aren’t any networking events going on.
