Authenticity FTW

This post originally appeared on ArtsHacker.com.

We are bombarded with hundreds, even thousands of marketing messages each day. What cuts through that clutter is engaging, authentic content that your target audience can relate to. A recent article in Forbes asserts that a great way to do this is through user-generated content (UGC) and I don’t disagree.

According to a 2014 study conducted by Cohn & Wolfe, 63% of consumers would prefer to do business with a brand they view as more authentic than its competitors.

Authentic content can provide customers with an engaging visual experience — what’s more real than content created by real people who most consumers can actually relate to? As in any relationship, trust is earned, and brands have the opportunity, now more than ever, to cultivate trust from the bottom up.

I have been a proponent of arts organizations using UGC for some time now (see this ArtsHacker article). We have the luxury of up to thousands of people attending our events — the vast majority of whom have smartphones and are active on social media. How can we better engage them to create authentic content that will resonate in a crowded marketplace?

I’ve got a couple of examples to hopefully inspire you:

Photo Booth

One of the simplest ways to do this is to set up a photo booth. Encourage patrons to take a photo of themselves and post it to social media using a hashtag. Perhaps offer a reward for posting like a…