How Seasonally Curated User-Generated Content Helps a Brand

A report by the National Retail Federation shows that up to 85% of consumers would wait for the right sale, season, or date to make a purchase no matter how great they want or need it.

The easiest way to explain seasonal content is “Content that sees significant spikes in the number of readers (consumers) based on a distinct date, holiday, major events and season”.

In other words, it is the opposite of evergreen content.

Acknowledging the above fact, when businesses make sure that their product/service has got the spotlight through seasonal marketing, they see a boost in sales. More cases on this later. Let us now address…

What is User Generated Content (UGC)?

UGC is any content-text, videos, images, blogs, testimonials, etc., created by the people for the people. The idea is to let users generate content for the business by being customers or even brand ambassadors.

A study from McKinsey found that brands can increase their engagement rates by up to 100% when they use UGC on social media. These posts also have a higher level of authenticity than other types of posts, which can help provide a more personal connection with your customers.

Posts that are ‘seasonally curated’ indicate that they are prepared for a predetermined period. These posts are usually designed to help customers learn about the company's products, sales, or availability during a specific time of the year.

It is important to note that these pieces of user-generated content do not replace content written by professional writers. They merely provide additional options for marketers who want to engage with their audiences in new ways based on trends that are processed using real data. 

So what can account for seasonality?

Seasonality in business is knowing what time of the year you can influence what people buy, how people feel, and how people spend their free time. The same applies to the strategic publishing of seasonal content. 

Each season has its feel — this is why some businesses rely on specific seasons to push their marketing campaigns for more exposure to the target audience. 

Now that you know about seasonality, USG, and seasonal content. Let us dive deep into the crux of this article…

How does seasonally curated UGC help a brand stand out?

There are many benefits of having seasonally curated user-generated content:

By identifying the purpose of your offering and how it serves your audience beforehand, you are ready to engage your prospects without delaying data collection and processing into useful consumable information. 

A business can create multiple forms of content say blogs, long and short-form ads, and audiovisual cues, and distribute them on various platforms. 

Seasons like winter and summer give a business a large window to advertise and push their product. Single-day events like Black Friday, Christmas, Valentine's, and Cyber Monday need a lot of prep. 

Case: Similarweb

Adelle Kehoe, Director of Content for Similarweb says, “We all know the beauty of good content lies in creativity. However, I cannot stress enough that without sufficient planning, even the best, most creative content marketing ideas won’t make it. Start planning your Black Friday content in the summer, and your Valentine’s in January (or better, December). 

Assemble ‘seasonal squads and calendars’ within your department. Use these squads to brainstorm ideas, do competitor research, and most importantly: organize workflows to ensure your content gets published on time and distributed in all the right places. 

By helping your customers discover what they love you are creating wants or in some cases a response like “I NEED THIS”. 

Personalizing your marketing according to the season provides a rather gratifying and meaningful shopping experience which in turn increases the rates of recurring customers and helps in referral or word-of-mouth sales. 

People always share their shopping experiences with friends and family. 75% of social media users tend to tell a friend or family about a business’s offering if they find it inspiring which then influences the purchase decisions of 83% of the people in their network.

Case: CampusReel.org

Nick Jordan, Founder and CEO of Workello, started working with CampusReel.org which is a college/university review website. 

They grew their traffic from 0 to 200,000+ p.m organically within 12 months. 

Now, what differentiates them?

Nick says that all the other competitors were using content that was not written by the students or faculty.

In his B2C SEO case study, you can see that CampusReel generated seasonal UGC from real students on different aspects like dorm life, classes, teachers, facilities, campus, clubs, etc. 

The seasonal aspect here is the start of application dates. 

Let’s speak about the Christmas season since it just passed us. Did you know that 42% of consumers in America start making purchases for the festival around the first week of November?

And around 79% of the consumers in the USA made purchases online. And the only way to get to those consumers is by creating a buzz.

• Getting in touch early with opinion leaders

• Focusing on people

• Taking pre-orders 

• Building anticipation 

All of the above will help your business capitalize on, in this case, the spending habits of consumers which tend to start almost two months before the actual day itself. 

Don’t take it from me…

Case: Sony Playstation

While Sony provides all its users with a proprietary community within the Playstation Universe, it has not bowed down from putting in efforts towards achieving a grand social media presence. 

With over a 400% increase in the number of followers on Twitter alone, in the last five years, the team at Sony Playstation has cracked the code of buzz marketing by using content in the forms of teasers, wins, and fails snippets, trailers, streaming and more. 

They have been able to build anticipation even amongst followers who do not own their device or might even be using one of their competitors. 

PROTIP: Use Social CRMs to not miss out on any lead (at any stage of the sales funnel)

When someone does not plan on buying a product or service but does it anyway when he/she/they are impulsively making a purchase. 

Around 87% of consumers in the US make impulsive purchases. This psychological trait is what we need to tap into with seasonal content. 

Impulsive buying tends to increase the adrenaline and thus brings the buyer into a better mood. By carefully crafting your sales funnel you cut the time taken by a cold lead when making a purchase decision.

By using user-generated data to fabricate content that propagates a sense of urgency your business can see better balance sheets at the end of the year. 

Case: 15Hive

15Hive is a SaaS brand that caters to everything ‘People’. They have multiple packages with different features that unlock with a higher tier. 

Now, if you have used their software you will realize that they take advantage of a chance to show you what other features you could unlock with a better pack. 

While some marketers call this the classic upsell, many think that it is a homogenous mix of upselling and impulsive marketing. 

Moving on… We will be discussing a little about how to curate seasonal content that converts. Nothing too deep in this article, but watch out for an in-depth one on the same in the future. 

How to Select The Best Theme for Your Seasonally Curated User-Generated Content

If it has proven to be difficult to find enough time to create custom content each month. The following five steps will help you create seasonal curations that are timely and relevant to your audience.

Winding up, 

Build trust and credibility with followers/customers by spending more time generating meaningful content for the users by the users regularly.

To do this you will need to make sure your data and sample space are large enough to take calculated risks.

Also, get early access to influencers and brand ambassadors knee-deep in your niche. They need not have millions of followers. Just the right segment of followers.  

Platforms like YouTube completely rely on user-generated data so why shouldn’t you?

Author Bio

Himaan Chatterji is a B2B SaaS writer and a full-time digital nomad working with SaaS brands around the world to create a web of interconnected long-form actionable resources. When not on his desk, he indulges in Latin dancing and reading altered perspectives on the mundane.