For GoPro, a picture is worth a thousand words – and then some.

The manufacturer of un-smashable, un-drownable wearable action cameras seems to believe strongly in the old saying that a picture is worth a 1,000 words, as it actively encourages and shares user-generated content. Go Pro has essentially mastered the content marketing game: The California-based camera manufacturer keeps its 2.3 million-strong audience entertained and informed primarily through its YouTube channel while hyper-engaging on Instagram and keeping busy on Facebook. GoPro enables the company’s fans to evangelize on its behalf. All GoPro needs to do is provide the camera.

YouTube is GoPro’s principal social channel. The company had over 450 million video views, over 1.8 million subscribers and ranked #1 on the Brand Channel Leaderboard for January through March 2014.

Engagement = subscribers =engagement

How do they do it? GoPro’s expert marketers keep in mind what draws subscribers to the brand and leverage the social features to encourage conversation within the GoPro community. As a result, customers become and remain engaged with content they want to see. According to Nicholas Woodman, GoPro’s Founder and CEO, “GoPro helps people capture and share their lives’ most meaningful experiences with others – to celebrate them together.” This engagement increases the three-dimensionality of the brand and builds loyal subscriber relationships.

In addition, GoPro curates content from users via Instagram. GoPro gamifies the submission of user-generated content through their Photo of the Day and Video of the Day contests. In fact, nine out of the top ten most engaged-with photos from GoPro’s Instagram account in 2014 were winners of the Photo of the Day Contest. 

The successful combination of user-generated content and social media even featured prominently in GoPro’s S-1 filing from May 2014.

Enthusiasm for the GoPro brand fuels a virtuous cycle of content sharing and drives sales. These combined successes make GoPro one of the most successful consumer brands for its social media strategy and ongoing community engagement. GoPro’s financial disclosures in 2013 demonstrated just how successful this virtuous cycle is for the company: Although GoPro increased year-over-year marketing costs by only $41,000 the company achieved $28 million more in net income.

Lessons for Others

Every day, GoPro’s online audience grows by thousands of new subscribers and the customer-centric content programming receives extremely high engagement. This growing audience wields a great deal of influencecommensurate with its size on GoPro. You can bet that any decisions on future products GoPro launches will be finely tuned to what their customers are sharing and saying online.

If you have concerns as to the accuracy of anything posted on this site, please send your concerns to Peter Carr, Program Director, Social Media for Business Performance.

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