Brand-driven content is losing its edge. Consumers trust real voices, not corporate messaging. So how do you tap into user-generated content at scale? Discover how to scale user-generated content, build community, and create high-value content efficiently with insights from Tamara Omerovic.
In this episode, Tamara Omerovic from Underdogs Marketing shares how she built a thriving content community, scaling Databox’s newsletter to 13,000 contributors using expert-driven UGC. Her innovative approach enabled the company to produce authoritative content with minimal internal resources.
We break down how software companies can harness UGC to build credibility, strengthen community, and create marketing assets that drive long-term impact. Whether you're struggling with content production or looking to enhance trust with your audience, this episode delivers a practical roadmap for making user-generated content work for you.
plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one e-commerce partner for selling software, plugins, themes, and SaaS. If you enjoyed this episode, head to plugin.fm to check out previous episodes.
Tamara: Databox builds thought leadership by creating content with their audience. So the key here is not to create content for your audience, but with your audience. And that's what we are known for now. So we are someone who is not afraid to show opinions of others, who is not afraid to showcase different experiences. And it's all about figuring out things together. We never positioned ourselves as a jack of all trades, like we know everything. We're the best. But we're always like, hey, our customers are the ones who know the best—because that is really true. And like, let's ask them for help. And you know, our customers are also our audience. So that's like how everything works together.
Patrick: Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of plugin.fm, where we extract key lessons from top entrepreneurs to inspire your business growth. My name is Patrick Rauland. I'm an e-commerce expert and educator, and I'm here with my co-host, Goran Mirkovic, a content marketing specialist and the CMO at Freemius.
Today, we're going to be chatting with Tamara Omerovic about community building and user-generated content. And before I go any further, I will acknowledge that I have a ridiculous Christmas sweater on. And if you're just listening to the podcast, you should check us out on YouTube to see this ridiculous sweater.
Welcome to the show, Tamara.
Tamara: Thank you so much for having me.
Patrick: So I'm really excited to talk about UGC today. UGC is user-generated content. But before we get into exactly what Tamara built with Databox—Tamara, what is UGC and maybe some real examples of UGC that you've seen as a marketer?
Tamara: Of course. User-generated content is basically any kind of content that your users or customers create about your brand or products instead of you creating it yourself. So this could be anything like social media posts, reviews and testimonials, or blog posts or articles.
But here's another thing I want to mention about UGC. It doesn't have to be just about your product itself. It can also be about the best practices, solutions to common problems, or any topic that's actually relevant to your customers.
For example, at Databox, we weren't primarily focused on showcasing how people use our analytics software.
We actually encouraged users to share their expertise on things such as key metrics to track and report on. So one of the topics could be like, what success companies are measuring to achieve their goals?
Or what should marketing teams be measuring to understand their performance and similar? Then also, like, we explore best practices for using the tools we integrate with. So how can you get the most out of GA4 or HubSpot? And then also, like, solutions to some of the common challenges our customers face—so how to choose the right visualizations for your dashboards, how often to report your performance, and so on and so on.
So I'm mentioning this because this broader approach helped us create a ton of valuable content that addressed our audience's needs and made us a go-to resource, of course, over time in the analytics space. And this is not a typical way of doing the user-generated content.
I actually haven't yet encountered a company who does it the same way, but I want to mention this because I think it's actually the right way to do it. When it comes to some really good examples—so one example that really sticks with me is the GoPro Awards program. So GoPro—we all know what the product is about—they encourage their users to submit their best photos and videos taken with their cameras.
And the winning submissions get featured on the GoPro website and social media. And it's just an incredible amount of content to see. So it's not only a constant stream of amazing content for the company, but it also shows what their cameras can do in a way that no fancy ad campaign could ever achieve.
And today, like, if I read this somewhere, I think that their users—like customers—generate around 6,000 videos every day, which is insane.
Another example that I like is Buffer. So this is something closer to what Databox is trying to achieve overall. So their user-generated content is not about their product, but about the people that use it. So they built a community where users share content about their lives and passions using the hashtag #BufferCommunity. And ah, I like this because it shows the brand's personality and builds connections with users in a way that goes beyond just promoting their product.
Goran: Yeah, this is very interesting. Thanks for the cool examples. But when we kind of think about user-generated content, as someone who has over a decade of experience in marketing, this is not something that is suddenly popular. It's always something that people wanted—to see your users basically creating content for you and, like, showcasing your either philosophy or, like, value of a product or anything in between by themselves, like in a non-marketing way.
But ah, given what has recently kind of happened with SEO and, like, the whole EEAT algorithm change, do you think that user-generated content is becoming even more important? Because from my perspective, I've seen more and more people trying to include quotes in their articles, to reach out to more subject matter experts, to collaborate. So can you share some, like, your two cents on that?
Tamara: So audiences are becoming more discerning and skeptical of information from unknown brands. And the second thing is shifting content consumption habits. So people are turning away from traditional websites and seeking answers on social media and community forums, where discussions feel more authentic and human. And this shift highlights a crucial need. So people actually crave genuine conversation and connection. So now we are living in a world of increasingly automated content, and customers, audiences—they're looking for spaces where they can engage with real people, where they can share their experiences, and where they can learn from each other. And this is where any business can truly make a difference.
Goran: Yeah. This is very interesting. Do you think—just like an extension of this question—as like an SME, as like a subject matter expert, do you think you can actually, like, leverage this as a relevant marketing strategy to kind of contribute to, like, websites like, let's say, Databox or others who are, like, keen to feature subject matter experts? Can you actually grow your personal brand and business like that nowadays?
Tamara: Definitely can. You definitely can. Like, if you contribute to relevant brands, if you share your genuine experience and knowledge, like, over time, this inevitably brings exposure for you, and, like, it can help you promote your services, your product, in a very natural way. It's not about, you know, just getting a backlink or something like that, but it can really bring value for the contributors as well.
Patrick: Yeah, I want to go back to what you said about AI. I—so, you know, right—getting into blogging 10 years ago, sometimes I would write a post, and I'm the only person who wrote that post. But we live in a totally different world now, where we are just absolutely swamped in data. And anything—to me—anything that gives you unique data that only you have, and maybe it's just a unique quote—I know that's maybe the smallest form of unique data. But anything that gives you uniqueness, I just feel like is worth pursuing. Anything that gives you the slightest edge, like, we actually have real users saying, these ten—here's ten real users, what they said about our product. That is just so much more valuable than a recycled, recycled blog post.
Tamara: Yeah, and even, like, if those best practices seem basic, at least you have some confirmation that they work, or we’ll see how someone else used them. So I think, like, it has a completely different perspective.
Patrick: So we were just talking about blogging, and have you used UGC in a lot of other mediums? You know, are you using it in videos or other marketing mediums?
Tamara: Databox was always focused only on blog posts. So that was—that still is—the space for user-generated content. And then it's all about repurposing. So repurposing—ah—in the newsletter that we have, on social media, like highlighting some quotes or some insights, tagging the respondents. Sometimes we even dedicate an entire podcast episode to some research findings or had like an internal team member or a partner that we worked with, comment on the results and on the insights. But like primarily, it was on the blog. I mean, it still is on the blog.
Patrick: So we have a bunch of other questions, but I think we really want to get into this case study with Databox, 'cause I think that sort of—that'll help us talk about all the other issues here. So what did you do at Databox, and how did it relate to UGC?
Tamara: Okay, so to explain the strategy we had in the most simple way, I'm also going to add some examples. I think it will be easier. So our strategy at Databox mainly revolves around crowdsourcing quotes from experts on different topics that are relevant to our audience and product. So broadly speaking, our blog is about business analytics, KPIs, and metrics.
So, for example, instead of writing a typical blog post—when I say typical, I wouldn't say like AI content—but you know, like recycling existing information.
So instead of doing that, we actually create a survey and ask people to share their experiences and opinions. We do a statistical analysis of the sample, and we feature the best quotes in the final article.
After the article goes live, we would email the people featured and promote the posts on social media channels. Here, we also tag the people who participated, which helps us drive engagement. So I'm going to go a bit deeper to give you an example, like around a specific topic. So if we are writing an article about the best practices to increase YouTube CTR.
We are going to look for companies and marketers who have a successful YouTube channel or marketing agencies that specialize in video marketing. Apart from the open-end question, where we collect the quotes, we also have additional multiple-choice questions that help us gather relevant information on the topic in general. So what is their average CTR? So that helps us see if they're successful or not in this topic at all, like how often they post new videos on YouTube, which video optimization tactics brought them the best results, and so on. These additional questions are important because they help us gather statistical data and uncover insights about video marketing in general. And what I think is interesting to mention is that, like, when we combine all the surveys we ran on a specific topic, we can also create an original statistics post, which we also do.
And the strategy is in general, like, very complex and very hard for me to describe. So if I would have to describe it maybe in one sentence, I would say it's a unique combination of influencer marketing, original research, and social promotion.
Goran: This is really interesting, but what's in it for the contributor? Because, like, let's say that you are a software company, you're watching this episode, you're kind of bought in the idea of, like, you know, investing in such a system and building it for your business, but you are relatively small. Can you give us some examples of how you potentially entice people to collaborate? That would be, I think, really helpful. Plus, if I'm understanding this correctly, this is basically a strategy where you build, like, one central asset and then, like, spawn out of, like, a couple of articles or, like, items from it. Right?
Tamara: So when it comes to incentives, one of the things that we thought that was an incentive were like backlinks because Databox had such a strong domain. But then after a lot of time we spent doing this, we realized that it's actually the results and it's really the content. So our contributors were generally interested in seeing the results and seeing the best practices from other experts. And this could be like a really good incentive. If you want to create generally quality content that is really helpful, then like you, you are not going to have issues with people contributing to it. And also, what I think is a good incentive is that they can actually network with other experts.
So they can be, oh, you contributed to Databox content like a while ago, me too, like we should hang out or I don't know, work together or whatever. So that was also like something that worked for us really well. And I think this is something that businesses should definitely leverage as an incentive, like if they are trying to pursue this program.
Patrick: The thing that seems just so, so, so good and so smart is that you're not—when I'm thinking of UGC, I want to reach out to people individually. I'm like, oh, I know Bob used my product and he liked it. Let me email Bob. Um, but then that's just super time-consuming. Whereas if you can create, I don't know, a database of people and, yeah, a list of 20 people who are all experts on this topic or 100 people and you send out a survey. So if you can make a list of 100 and you can send out a survey, do you get 20 responses? And then you can pick the best quotes from those responses and you get that statistical data. It just seems really smart to think about this from a going-wide perspective instead of it—again, my first thought is like, I'm just going to email Bob and that's just going to take forever, and I'll never make a piece of content if I go that route.
Tamara: Yeah, that's why, particularly for us, surveys were important because surveys were open for, let's say, like three weeks, sometimes even longer, and then contributors have enough time to respond. They were usually short, so it doesn't take more than, you know, five or ten minutes of their time to contribute, and we actually had like—it was easy to collect all the data in one place. I mean, we're probably going to talk about this a bit later when you go into systems and processes, but just like to mention it.
Goran: Yeah, I have a question that—obviously, like this is something that is going to potentially become a bigger focus for most companies, especially because, like we said, you know, authority is something that you need to build for your business in order to stay relevant. But let's say that you have to do this again, right? That you are just starting with it. Like what are some of the first steps that you would look at? Was it to buff up, like a big content list first or like start small? Do you have any tips on how to start this over again from scratch?
Tamara: I have like a shorter answer and a broader answer. Maybe I can start with the shorter answer first. You need a way to collect content. So this could be as simple as a Google Form or a basic survey tool. Then you need a space to share it. So this could be your existing blog or social media channels or even like a dedicated landing page or dedicated, like, part of your website or form or something like that.
And you need a process to manage it. So even a simple spreadsheet can help you track submissions and contributor information. But I wouldn't recommend using a spreadsheet. Like, start small, experiment, and then gradually build out your program as you gain momentum.
I’m going to explain how we actually did it. When it comes to the team, we had three roles. So we had an outreach manager. This person focuses on building your contact list, conducting outreach, creating surveys. So when I say creating surveys, I don't mean designing the questions—like just building the survey in the tool and promoting the research initiative, like on social media and so on. In the beginning, it's very important to have a dedicated outreach manager because most likely you won't have an existing list of engaged contacts. You might have a list for customers or like some community, but I'm not sure what level they're going to be engaged.
Apart from the outreach manager, we had a content specialist. So this role requires someone who is capable of writing—like coming up with engaging topics, formulating insightful questions, and then writing the actual reports. You might also work with freelance writers to help summarize findings or you can do them internally. We always outsourced this, so we had freelance writers who just, like, did the final report for us based on our instructions.
And, like, the third team member that you need is a project manager or a coordinator. So someone who is going to oversee the entire UGC program, because this process has a lot of steps. And to ensure smooth execution and organization, you need someone who is just going to think about this—especially when you are juggling multiple projects at the same time.
Regarding tools, our minimum setup was project management software. So we always used Asana. I really love Asana—like, I'm still using it today for anything. And it just has, like, a great parent-child task structure that you can use to organize the entire project. So, for example, our parent task is one article topic, and then the subtasks are actually all the steps you need to complete in the process. So this could be like: research the topic, come up with the questions, approve the questions or review the parts or whatever, then build the survey, promote the survey. Then, like, more subtasks on different channels—like do it on social media, do it via email, do it on HARO, and so on and so on. So this is really, really—like, we couldn't live without Asana.
Apart from the project management tool, you need a tool for contact management. Since we are, like, a SaaS software, we used our existing CRM—so HubSpot. But even something simple—like even a simple email marketing platform—could work for this, because you basically need a place to manage your growing network of experts and contributors.
And lastly, since our process was very unique and included survey creation, we also used a survey platform. So in our case, this was SurveyMonkey. SurveyMonkey offers advanced analysis features, and to use it to its full extent, you actually need to have statistical knowledge to avoid misinformation of data. So initially—like now—we have a dedicated marketing research analyst. We didn't have this from the very start. This is something that you do when you actually want to scale the program. And a lot of the things we did weren't good. So we had charts that were upside down—literally.
I don't know how we did it or why, but they were just upside down for some reason. And I think you can probably find in some older articles that are not updated—you can still find some weird charts.
Yeah, I mean, that just happens. But you know, we just went with the flow. And so, my advice: if you don’t want to have charts that are upside down, I would suggest using SurveyMonkey or a similar platform. Basically, you have very helpful survey summaries that can help you track performance, view individual responses, and generate existing charts for your content.
So this is something that you can also use. And once you decide to scale the program—if this really works for you—you can maybe invest in more resources and more people for it.
I think something that is very important when starting out is to adopt a reporter mindset. So, focus on presenting the data that you gather in a clear and engaging way, rather than trying to perform complex analysis. And this is like the easiest way to leverage user-generated content with surveys, with limited resources.
Goran: Yeah, and like, thinking about what you’re saying—it’s very interesting—the whole backup structure, like if we don’t count the people invested in the project, it’s almost free. The only tool that you pay for is SurveyMonkey. I think it’s like $35.
Tamara: Because I guess that like almost every company has a CRM already. They most likely have project management tools. So yeah, like we never invested, I think, additionally. You know, like we didn’t spend a lot of money. We built the entire program organically.
Goran: Yeah, so the tools are there, basically, for you to hit the ground running.
Patrick: Yep. Can I—let me just take a step back here. Is this something that you planned out in advance and pitched to the client and said, “Hey, we’re going to need to hire these people, and then we’re going to be able to develop these surveys and publish them every month”? Because to me, that seems like a big ask of a client. It sounds really cool, but I don’t think they’d see the big picture. Or did it somehow grow organically?
Tamara: No, this definitely grew. I mean, when we started out, we were happy if we had like 15 respondents because we didn’t know what we were doing. Like, we tried to do something, and it took us, I think, at least two to three years to really scale this.
I joined the company—I was the first face of scaling that program—because I was the editorial manager, the person who’s going to oversee everything, come up with new ideas, and so on. Before that, they just had the director of marketing, the person who did the outreach, and a content coordinator. And the roles were kind of mixed because they also had a community builder who promoted the surveys and worked on the social media channels a bit. But it was like—I wouldn’t say it was messy—but it wasn’t what it is today.
I mean, this is really normal. Like, you should start with some process, but that process is not going to be perfect. And maybe this isn’t going to work for you. So you need to find your own way. But you have to do it. Like, you have to give it some time. I would say at least two quarters and see what happens, because I think this is really the right way to approach content today—especially with all the things we mentioned, like with the rise of AI tools and all the generic content we’re fighting with.
Goran: Yeah, but I think what’s really important here—in addition to building authority for your brand and bringing in externally validated experts, which makes you look more serious—it also kind of builds distribution into the entire process. Because most people, when they’re featured in a good light, especially in really impressive content, they’re enticed to share it.
Especially if you're targeting someone who lives off their personal brand and is constantly looking for good content to share with their audience—you’re basically giving them material to go out to their audience and present themselves in an even better light. So I think this is an additional piece that needs to be considered. In a world where distribution is a nightmare, this sort of builds it in by design.
Tamara: Yeah, I mean, our contributors were always eager to share our reports. They’d be like, “Oh my God, I got featured in a Databox report!” I never really thought it was a big deal—probably because I worked there—but I can imagine that it means a lot for a small consultant or a very small marketing agency. It gives you a lot of exposure.
Patrick: Sorry, I was just going to go back to one thing. If we’re thinking about a really small company that doesn’t have an outreach manager—that was the word I was looking for—is there an even smaller MVP that someone could get started with?
Tamara: I don’t think there is, really. I mean, that was basically my shorter answer earlier. Maybe there’s a way for an internal content specialist to collect quotes for you, but it kind of stops there. Designing the surveys, creating them, doing the outreach—it’s just a lot of work for one person.
But if you want to go very MVP, your internal content specialist could just collect expert quotes using social media. That’s probably the easiest way to start. And honestly, people are usually pretty eager to respond. They don’t see it as spammy or anything like that. It depends how you approach it, but we had really positive responses when we did that.
Goran: Do you think this program actually helped grow Databox’s presence in a different light?
Tamara: I think definitely, yes. Because usually, companies try to promote their vision, their ideas—they want to build thought leadership that way. But Databox built thought leadership by creating content with their audience.
The key is not to create content for your audience, but with your audience. That’s what we became known for. We were the company that wasn’t afraid to show the opinions of others. We weren’t afraid to showcase different experiences.
And it was always about figuring things out together. We never positioned ourselves as a jack of all trades, like “We know everything.” Instead, we were always like, “Hey, our customers are the ones who know best—let’s ask them for help.” And since our customers were also our audience, it just made everything click.
Goran: Yeah, you basically said what I think is really important—not having a barrier between you and your audience. Because that creates the ultimate feedback loop.
And if you can establish real connections, and give people more than just basic product value—like offering a marketing platform where they can get featured or introduced to new customers, or even find co-marketing partners—that becomes a huge lever. Especially as the company evolves. Once you have an active community, you can kickstart things like a conference, a meetup, a webinar, because the audience is already engaged. It’s kind of two-sided.
Tamara: Yeah, like right now—even though I’m not personally a part of it—Databox has “Debug Sessions.” They take research results from longer surveys (some open for six months or more) and talk about the findings live. It happens every Friday.
And there were sessions where they had more than 100 people show up. I mean—to have 100 people on a Friday? To me, that’s a huge success.
Patrick: Yeah, I like that a lot. Um, and now I’m just looking at my notes here. I guess... um, so I can think of one other company that does something like Databox. So there’s a company called E-commerce Fuel, and they do a once-a-year massive data dump. Basically, it’s a private community, but they basically do a very, very, very long survey for their community. And then they post all these results on their blog. And it’s really interesting because it’s a private community, and they compare answers year over year. So it’ll be like, “Last year, 30% of our audience used Shopify. This year, it’s 33%. And 3% of people came from Magento and WooCommerce stores,” stuff like that. Are there other companies that do maybe larger sort of big surveys like that?
Tamara: I’m not sure like at this moment. I saw companies that, for example, gather data from their own software. And then you present some results. We also did the same thing. For example, we had, we still have a post, Top Google Analytics Metrics Marketers Track, and how we found this out, basically, we went into our product and see like the metrics that most customers visualize on their dashboards. And then, like, based on this, okay, if I don’t know, a thousand people track these five metrics, they must be important, so let’s, you know, report on them. And we did the same for Google Ads, for Facebook Ads, like for similar big integrations. I think that like HockeyStack, they have benchmark reports. They’re using data from their own platform and basically applying the thought leadership approach to those reports. And they basically try to analyze why have some people invested more or less in some quarter and similar things. It’s very interesting, but that’s what comes to mind though right now.
Patrick: Nice. I was just thinking, there is one other example a couple of years ago, Netflix, I remember on social media, started sharing. It’s like “X percent of people love this show” or not just the top shows, because that’s kind of basic, but I remember them posting some stuff on social media about like, “If you like this movie, then you’ll like this movie,” or stuff like that. But there was a bit of a backlash and people thought it was sort of like an invasion of privacy. So here’s a good question: How do you share that without betraying people’s trust and feeling like Big Brother that’s just giving your data away?
Tamara: No, it’s always anonymous. So we are never going to name any company or something like that. I think we don’t have access to the data, even if we wanted to. But it’s always like, for example, gathering broader data. So we know how many customers are using, for example, GA4, HubSpot, Google Ads. Based on that data, we can say, like, “These are the top 10 most popular marketing integrations.” So we take a sample of all the marketing agencies we have and all the tools they use to connect to Databox with. And that’s how we get the data. But companies themselves aren’t involved in that. I think like it’s nothing, nothing like that is, I don’t know, alarming, or it’s nothing bad. I think it’s actually helpful. I don’t see it as an invasion of privacy or misuse of data. So that’s my, and personal, opinion.
Goran: I want to switch gears a little bit and refocus on, like, let's say just growing the blog with user-generated content. And the cool thing, like, you have a list and, you know, the program is going well, but we could come to a point where there is contributor fatigue. So, let's say, just like, you know, you got your three mentions on the Databox blog and you got your backlinks. How do you keep the folks engaged? Do you have any instruments or strategies to just nurture those relationships? Because I think, like, in addition to setting up the system and running the entire operation, there needs to be some effort invested into actually nurturing the relationship.
Tamara: Yeah, that makes sense. When it comes to building those relationships and engagements, I wanted to share what works for us. First, like, you are the one who has to be consistent. You have to turn the content contribution into a habit for your chosen experts. For example, at Databox, they always know they're going to receive an email on Wednesday or Thursday. They always know the content of the email. They understand the entire process, what is going to happen, and what the next steps are.
So, establish a regular schedule for sending out surveys or whatever method you decide to have for a program. Use clear email templates and set deadlines for participation. So, that is the first thing.
The second thing is, as I mentioned before, it's really important to provide truly valuable content. I think this is the biggest incentive for contributors. In our case, if you contribute to the survey, you're among the first people who are going to see the results. One incentive, if this is a burning topic for you or a problem, is that if you contribute, you're going to see the answers sooner and maybe gain some new knowledge sooner. It's something that I think really, really worked for us. So, try to deeply understand your audience's pain points. I know that feels basic, but it's really, really important.
And really try to understand what questions they need answered. So, focus on the topics they care about and invite them to join the conversation and share their unique perspective. Ensure that your final content piece really provides valuable insights and exposure for them. I think one of the things that also makes our contributors come back is that we really embrace diverse viewpoints. We are not pushing our own agenda. We showcase a variety of perspectives to build trust and credibility, and we are positioning ourselves as curators. So, act as a facilitator of knowledge and try to bring together different voices and insights. I think this is really key when it comes to what made our contributors stay constantly engaged. They constantly participate in the conversation. Even when we rerun all surveys, we have contributors who answer again because they want to see the new data, the new results. Best practices always change, challenges change, and so on. So, they still participate because they want to see what the new trends are, what new things people are doing, what mistakes maybe some people are making, and so on.
Patrick: So, related to this, I think Goran was talking about contributor burnout and exhaustion. Let me take it from a slightly different angle. How do you engage someone?
And the example I have is, so I think this is similar. Help a Reporter Out (HARO) is a thing. I don't know if people will say, "Hey, I'm looking for an e-commerce expert on blah, blah, blah." I'll reply. I've done it maybe three times, and I've never heard a response back. So, even though I could get featured in a thing, I've just never... I've tried it three times, and I've just given up. I'm just not gonna go back to that website. Like, it doesn't... You know, I respond to a couple of questions and never heard back. So, I guess, do you have any metrics or any processes just to get... Cause I feel like if you get someone to contribute once, they'll probably keep doing it. Is there anything about getting someone to contribute that first time? And, you know, maybe it's like, "Hey, we saw someone who contributed to this survey who's never contributed before. We should definitely feature them on the blog." Is there anything like that?
Tamara: There were times when we even had complaints from some groups like, "Why am I not featured? I left a quote like five times." And we said, "Like, your quote isn't good enough. It's really generic. It's not helpful. This is something we can find online." So, it's really not useful to us. Like, sorry, but try to provide a better answer or share your own experience or contribute to a topic that better fits your skills. So, we were very honest and transparent about our process. And I think you have to set really clear expectations, basically to have clear guidelines as well. So, content and content format, how you structure the question.
What worked for us is to really highlight the experience. So, even if they didn't have results with a specific tactic or whatever, share your bad experience. We still want to talk about that. If you ask generic questions, you're going to get generic answers. And especially now, we had issues with AI-generated answers, believe it or not.
And you can really see them. For years, you can really tell when the answer is genuine or if they, you know, left an answer just because they wanted the backlink. So first, you should be honest and transparent, and have clear guidelines and a clear process in place, and set those correct expectations. And then you can... That's the first step to get the best answers. Yeah.
Patrick: You just sort of glossed right over that you give people feedback. I know, you know, we live in a very busy world, and lots of people just ghost, and like emails go into a black box that never gets answered. So just the fact that you're responding is... hey, I submitted five different quotes. Why wasn't I featured? Just the fact that you're responding to people is... that a little bit you actually, if they care about feedback, they'll read it and they'll grow a little bit. So, a little tough love is very valid. You know, hey, here's some critical feedback. It's very generic, make it more unique, interesting, compelling, and we'll feature it on the blog. I think that’s a step above many companies that just... there’s lots of email inboxes. So, I think you glossed over that, but I still think that's really important.
Tamara: I mean, we really do reply. Like, especially if someone is frustrated, we really like to reply to negative feedback because that is negative feedback for us.
Goran: Yeah, also one interesting thing that... you know, do you think that because it’s so hard to get featured, so because you had a hit like so many, like, you know, things, does this actually make people more engaged to like get featured? Because it’s the same... I don’t know if any of you like to play video games, like it’s really popular today, like people play like Souls-like games because they are very punishing. Again, for instance, it’s rewarding when you finally kind of get over that hump. Do you think that the rigorous system is actually motivating people to try harder and, you know, just kind of invest some actual sweat into producing quality content that could get featured?
Tamara: Maybe. I think like, really, it’s what you provide, it’s what you get. So if you really want to share your experience, your knowledge, like you’re going to get the same thing back because that is, after all, what affects the quality of the content. If we accepted any submission, like you can imagine what the content would look like. So, you have to moderate. You can’t just, you know, publish all the quotes you collected.
Patrick: So, Tamara, I think the one thing we haven’t talked about yet is probably how do you measure the results? You did say one thing, I think you said you want to give it two quarters. So there’s a timeframe of like at least six months, but what sort of metrics are you looking for? Maybe at the end of that six months, or at the end of a year, at the end of a certain time period, what do you want to see to know that this program’s working and is worth pursuing?
Tamara: So, there are different groups of metrics that you can track. I recommend tracking all of this if possible. So, if you’re doing surveys, there are some survey-specific metrics. So, the number of open surveys. This is important because it indicates how actively you are engaging in UGC initiatives. So if you are running one survey, five, 10, or you know, based on that effort from your end, you can also expect the results from the other end.
Then, the number of responses per survey. So, this shows the level of interest and participation from your audience. Then also, time to close a survey because a longer time to close may indicate issues with your outreach or survey design. So it’s one thing if you are running a long survey and you want to collect the answers for six months, like intentionally. And it’s a different thing when you are struggling to collect answers for months. So, that is why time to close is important.
So, there are also some audience growth and engagement metrics. So, it’s very important to track contact list size or contact list growth because it reflects the expansion of your network of potential contributors.
Then also, I recommend tracking new versus regular survey respondents, because a healthy influx of new respondents indicates that you are reaching a wider audience. And it's also important to track the number of answer drivers, because it can help you identify potential issues with your content or communication.
When it comes to content performance, you can track a number of visitors, like traffic on the final reports, to see the reach and engagement of your content. You can do the same for social media to see social media mentions and shares. And when it comes to business impact, this depends on your goal. In our case, this is primarily like signups, so leads, conversions.
Try to track how your generated content contributes to bringing new sales opportunities. What I think is the most important, and will show you the success of the program, is growing your contact list and attracting new respondents because this expands your pool of potential contributors, allowing you to gather diverse insights and to nurture relationships that can later lead to those sales opportunities. I don’t know if I was clear here.
Patrick: I wrote these down. I think you gave us nine KPIs. Sometimes I ask this question and people go, “I don’t know.” So the fact that you gave us nine KPIs is very important. And, you know, business results, surveys, how many people are responding, survey growth, the list size growth. So I think there’s a lot of good stuff there. Obviously, there’s the, you know, the business side, which is leads and traffic and stuff like that. But also, I think the unique stuff that I haven’t really heard before is, you know, how many people, how long are the surveys open for, that might indicate that you’re not doing enough outreach, stuff like that is very, very, very helpful. So I love that.
Tamara: I think that Databox is all about tracking performance and measuring performance. So like, if we have to know something, it’s metrics and KPIs. Like I can talk about it all day.
Goran: I just think when people see this episode, they will get enough information to start.
I think I have one question. What’s really hard when you are really into this type of content is how do you find that healthy mix between user-generated content and original content that you are doing for yourself? So even if you are opening your platform to bring external experts and just create an idea that you are a business where important conversations happen, you also want to build your own thought leadership, your own thoughts. So do you have any suggestions on how to properly mix original content that’s like soul thought leadership from your business versus user-generated content?
Tamara: This is a very hard question. I spent a lot of time thinking about this because, like at Databox, the core philosophy was user-generated content. The thought leadership approach was, like, you have to create content with your audience. And like, we used actually the research findings to share our own message. For example, like when we did a huge report on reporting practices for B2B businesses, we found out that still, like, I don’t know, like 60% of people, you know, they copy and paste the screenshots into, you know, presentations or something, and you know, that is so outdated. And then we call this out, and you know, it’s also a good place to promote our own product. So we did everything through that user-generated content and always, like, by practicing our audience. So, like ideally, here, I would say, like, do only this, but I know this is impossible. So maybe, like, since it’s very hard to develop the program, maybe like just, you know, try to do it once a month, establish a process, establish a system, and just try to have one original report per month. And because you’re probably going to uncover a bunch of mistakes in your own processing system, and then as you fix things, try to scale up. Like, then try to do it like two times a month, then like three times a month, and see how everything works out for you. I think that there is no golden answer here.
Patrick: Well, Tamara, thank you so much for being on the show. This has been so valuable.
Tamara: Okay, I am super happy to hear this because this is the entire point of me coming here.
Patrick: It’s been great. Go ahead, Goran.
Goran: Yeah, I think literally, as I said, like if I was watching this episode, I would have enough information to literally start the program today.
Tamara: And I really think it’s the right way to do content now because of all the AI-generated, topless content we are dealing with every day.
Patrick: To all of our listeners, thank you for also tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, like, subscribe, and tell your friends so we can carry on enticing awesome and influential guests like Tamara to join us and share their remarkable journeys. If you subscribe to the plugin.fm website, you will get early bird access to our future content. plugin.fm is brought to you by Freemius, your all-in-one payments, subscriptions, and taxes platform for selling software plugins, themes, and software as a service. If you’re struggling to grow your software revenue, send a note to contact@freemius.com to get free advice from Freemius' monetization experts.
My name is Patrick Rauland, and thanks for listening to plugin.fm.