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If you have happy customers and a good product, you might think that’s enough to have an effective marketing campaign. However, in order to be truly effective, you also need to have customers reviewing and recommending your products or services.

The early 2000s brought about the beginning of the “mommy blogging” trend, a time when online conversation between new mothers provided much-needed support and advice. Before I founded my agency, I had my own blog, as did the women who eventually went on to become my business partners. We relied on this relatively new platform to share our daily ups and downs and forge important relationships that, in many cases, have lasted to this day.

If there’s a topic that attracts nearly as much buzz as influencer marketing, it’s user-generated content (UGC). Wikipedia defines UGC as “any form of content, such as images, videos, text and audio, that have been posted by users on online platforms.” But when we’re viewing this topic through a marketing lens, we can think of UGC as any content related to a brand that is voluntarily produced by its customers.

According to a recent study by Hubspot, when it comes to getting information from and about the companies they’re interested in, consumers prefer videos over every other type of content. In addition to its popularity with consumers, video offers flexibility: Companies can choose scripted videos or livestreaming, can post to multiple channels, and can repurpose video content depending on the venue or target audience.

A study has shown that significantly more than half of consumers will patronize—or avoid—businesses that share their social and political viewpoints. In addition to wanting to attract “values-based” consumers, many business leaders want to join the conversations around causes they believe in.

“Content marketing” is a buzzword-sounding term that unfortunately is being used interchangeably with influencer marketing, native advertising and audience-centric marketing. At my agency, we often hear from clients who are confused about what content marketing is all about.

Once a bleeding-edge tactic, influencer marketing is now widely accepted as an extremely effective method for spreading brand awareness, building relationships and driving action online. As companies look to partner with influencers to reach their highly engaged audiences, questions often arise about best practices for recruitment, targeting and campaign activation.

There’s no shortage of cautionary tales when it comes to influencer marketing; speculation and myths run rampant throughout the industry. In the years since I founded Sway Group, I’ve seen misconceptions come and go in the influencer and content marketing space. And I’ve learned that the trick to avoiding strategy speedbumps is to stay informed.