Sometimes you have to look beyond social media when it comes to creating an user-generated strategy.

We’ve been enabling brands to get content from their audience directly through GoConnect for years. We’re relaunching this powerful tool today with an updated user interface (UI), additional functionality, and a new name: Direct Uploader.

Why should brands use Direct Uploader

1. LESSEN THE BARRIERS FOR CONTENT SUBMITTION

There are many active social media users on platforms across the globe, but not all of them are there. Some social media users are more selective about what they post on their social networks (e.g. travel, fitness, food, fashion, etc.). This doesn’t mean they won’t be interested in participating in your UGC campaigns. These people can submit high-quality UGC directly to you using Direct Uploader without having to share it on their social media accounts.

2. GET HIGH RESOLUTION IMAGE FILES

UGC campaigns face a common problem: visuals from third-party channels may not be high enough resolution to suit your brand’s needs. Direct Uploader allows you to easily obtain the original, high-quality image, video, audio, and text files from your audience. These high-resolution files are available for use in ads, web and billboards as well as print.

3. CAPTURE CONSUMER INFORMATION

Your audience information is key to personalizing your brand experience. Direct Uploader lets you capture valuable consumer data via customizable information fields. It then imports this information into other marketing tools.

4. SURE LEGAL COMPLIANCE

Although you don’t necessarily need the UGC rights in every case, it is a good practice to do so to ensure your legal team is happy. Direct Uploader allows you to link to your brand’s terms and conditions and ask that users agree with them during the content submission process.

Enhanced Direct Upload Features

Our Direct Upload tool has been relaunched with new UI and widget integration. This will allow for additional customizations, better asset handling, and more email events.

NEW USER INTERFACE

GoConnect now has a new name! Direct Uploader’s new interface is designed to make it easier to use existing GoConnect features. It also gives brands access to a whole host of new features.

The new UI can be broken down into three areas:

• Settings
• Upload Form
• Personalize

The Settings allows brands to address the higher level configurations of their respective Direct Uploader forms, including:

• Name the form
• Determining the term to be used with the form
• Determining which tag(s) should apply to content
• How to determine if a widget should go with the form

The next section within the editor is the Upload Form . Here, brands can pick which fields are available or not available within the form. Key new features in this section include:

• Ability to enable visual elements such as the progress bar and ‘Powered By Stackla’ logo
• New Topics and Navigation features introduced
• Ability to add custom fields
• Introduction of reCAPTCHA in the Forms

The new Topics feature enables two features in the Direct Upload form. Firstly, it provides a way of allowing content creators to self-categorize the content they submit from a list of predefined topics (which are tied to tags in Stackla). Secondly, it enables a navigation menu in the embedded widget which allows visitors to refine content displays by the respective topic.

The last section is Configure. This grouping includes all configuration options and editors. These are the main changes we made to this section:

• The Editor now allows you to see code changes in real time.
• To quickly find broken code or missing fields, improved validation checking.

DIRECT UPLOADER WIDGET INTEGRATION

A key improvement is the ability for Direct Uploader forms to be linked to specific widgets within Stackla.

This new functionality allows brands to:

• You can link to an existing widget, or create a new one from Direct Uploader
• For all features, generate a single embed code
• Direct Uploader allows you to add topics and navigation. This will allow for more precise content aggregation.
• Spam Protection

Direct Uploader now features Google reCAPTCHA, an advanced risk analysis engine that helps to prevent malicious software, bots and users from being able submit content via the form.

GREATER UPLOADER FOR FORM CUSTOMIZATION

Direct Uploader forms have been updated and are now more customizable. You can add your brand style guides to your content submission form.

The following are new customizations for Direct Uploader:

• Display Stackla branding
• Add custom fields to existing code
• Preview rendering updated to simplify customization
• Better templating to make it easier to code
• Intelligent validations to detect broken code/missing attributes

IMPROVED ASSET HANDING

Direct Upload supports audio, image, and text content. Direct Upload now supports the following file sizes:

• Images: Support for high-resolution images up to 25mb on all major phone and camera devices
• Videos: Support for 4K and HD video (upto 1GB file size).

We’re also going the extra mile with Direct Uploader to enrich asset data. Stackla now performs the following steps for assets that have been uploaded:

• EXIF data from images, such as camera information, and geo-location data (latitude/longitude/altitude) will be automatically appended to all uploaded UGC tiles and assets
• Original assets as well as transcoded, optimized versions of audio, video and image assets will be kept

DIRECT UPLOADER TRANSACTIONAL E-Mails

You want to instantly notify your customers that they have received their content or publish the content on your website. Stackla makes this easy!

One of the most exciting new Direct Uploader functions is the ability to send transactional emails to content creators. Powered by MailGun, Direct Uploader can now send transactional emails based upon the following events:

• Submission made via Direct Uploader
• Submission content published

These emails should align with your brand. You can customize our email templates and keep track of detailed stats on our platform.

Direct Uploader transactional emails features include:

• Templates that can be customized
• Brands have the ability to own their domain and brand.
• Ability to inject ad units or call-to-actions
• Statistics for email clicks, opens, and unsubscribes over time
• Unsubscribe and handling complaints

source https://www.nosto.com/blog/stackla-direct-uploader/