If you’re reading this, you already know what user-generated content (UGC) is and that it has been a hot topic on different social media platforms for quite some time now.
But how do you effectively source UGC? That’s where UGC platforms for brands come in!
Nowadays, when handling your marketing strategy through any digital channel, you must find and repurpose genuine user-generated content, since it comes with the best social proof around!
So, signing up for a UGC platform that searches across social channels to collect that customer feedback is a necessity. There’s no better way to have potential customers trust your brand!
Read on as I show you just what you need to drive more conversions.
FYI: You can embed user-generated content on your website automatically. Sign up now.
We asked marketing experts, CEOs, and company founders to share their experiences using UGC software to determine which is most helpful for marketers worldwide.
What is a user-generated content platform?
A UGC platform is a set of online marketing tools used to collect, moderate, and display authentic content created and published by customers of business.
UGC platforms definition as a separate G2 software category
So, essentially, UGC platforms are meant for brands to aggregate photos, videos, reviews, ratings, and any other form of media and feedback customers leave across the internet.
Businesses then repurpose this content for various marketing purposes. For instance, they run successful UGC campaigns after finding and engaging with UGC creators who create and distribute content on their social media channels by mentioning the brand and using a branded hashtag.
Inexpensive marketing material, right? No need to waste money on expensive productions meant to deliver your message via your voice when you can let others do it for you.
One of the main goals of this type of content is to strengthen brand awareness and loyalty by creating a community around the brand. Plus, it’s great for gauging user sentiment.
What types of UGC platforms are there?
Depending on whether they are only aggregating and managing existing UGC or discovering influencers and UGC creators to help them generate such content, we can talk about two different types of UGC platforms. Nevertheless, these two types complement each other:
- UGC management platforms – tools that collect, moderate, organize, and publish user-generated content from reviews, social media posts, photos, and videos across different channels, such as EmbedSocial, Taggbox, TINT, and Flowbox.
- UGC creator & influencer collaboration platforms – platforms that help brands find creators, manage collaborations, and generate new user-generated content through influencer partnerships and creator campaigns, such as Billo, Aspire, GRIN, and Upfluence.
Bottom line: You will spend more resources (time and money) if you use the second type since you still have to manage creators and pay for their time and efforts. With the first kind of UGC software, you will simply collect what’s out there, i.e., you get free marketing material.
As you can see, not all UGC solutions are built the same, and you have to consider your needs before choosing a UGC platform to boost your brand image. However, in most cases, you will only need a UGC manager like EmbedSocial, which will collect (for free) all the content you might need.
18 top UGC platforms [+expert recommendations]
Before diving into details below, here’s a concise comparison table of the top UGC management tools based on their feature set and what they’ve been designed to do:
We asked a question: “What are the best UGC platforms you’ve used to collect, analyze, and display UGC, and why?”, and the marketing community responded:
1. EmbedSocial: Complete UGC platform for brands
EmbedSocial is a complete online platform that helps brands leverage UGC across different marketing channels. It seamlessly integrates with all major social media channels (via official API connections), enabling fast and easy UGC collection with just a few clicks.
Plus, it provides tools to analyze and embed UGC on websites.
We use EmbedSocial to collect reviews from our tourism clients. It’s a breeze – we set up the form and add its link into follow-up emails from their booking engine. Then, linking the form to a review widget (another tool on their platform) makes it super easy to show off star ratings in Google SERP.
Lucas S, business owner
The platform offers two essential products/feature sets, including an AI-enhanced reviews management software and social media aggregation, as described below:
EmbedReveiews reviews management platform
Reviews management is a big part of the EmbedSocial UGC content platform. It is one of the best platforms for easily gathering user-generated content (UGC) in the form of online reviews and testimonials. It has a user-friendly interface and specializes in collecting reviews from social media such as Facebook and Google. It also offers different capabilities to collect reviews via Email, SMS, web forms, or direct upload.
The main features include automatic review generation from Google location, a Wall of Love page to display all reviews in one place, a views form to collect customer feedback on the website, Google reviews snippets, and much more.
FYI: You can automatically embed Google reviews widget on your website and show authentic user-generated reviews, increasing trust for more sales. Try it now.
EmbedFeed Social media aggregator for multiple social media platforms
Another great EmbedSocial product is its official API integrations with various social media platforms, which make it a social media management platform and social media aggregator.
This feature set helps brands collect content from their own social media accounts and accounts of others, such as UGC creators or actual customers. It integrates with multiple social media platforms, such as Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn, Threads and Facebook.
The main use case for users is the ability to pull UGC and social proof from a specified hashtag or videos and photos that people published by mentioning the user’s Instagram account.
EmbedSocial has approved integrations with all major social media aggregators that make it very powerful. It can sync content on users’ websites as soon as a customer publishes it on various social media channels, and the integrations allow thousands of content pieces such as Instagram mentions to be pulled seamlessly, which makes it a very stable platform for bigger brands and enterprises.
Finally, users can choose how they want to display the UGC on their websites by browsing a large Templates library that provides pre-built widgets that they can reuse and embed in just a few clicks.
2. Social Native (Olapic)
Social Native (formerly Olapic) is one of the top UGC platforms that collect and can curate user-generated content but also helps you discover influencers that best suit your business model (and social media strategy).
The platform is focused on collecting images and videos from Instagram and Twitter, and the method they use is through mentions and tags. The niches included are eCommerce brands, email marketing, social media marketing, digital advertising, and more.
It has an AI-powered suggestion system that determines which content would best match a specific brand’s UGC marketing channels, making audience targeting an entirely automated and accurate process.
I’ve used several UGC solutions over the years, some of the more memorable experiences being Pixlee, Yotpo, and Olapic. They’ve all done a terrific job collecting, searching, and displaying UGC, with some of them even going as far as providing engagement options for interacting with customers. The reason I jumped from one to another was that none of them had a content suggestion system that worked well for my needs, at least until I encountered Olapic.
Experience by Damjan Tanaskovic, CMO of Localizely, who used this platform:
3. Yotpo
Yotpo provides eCommerce marketing solutions aimed at large Shopify stores to collect and display user-generated content at scale. Yotpo integrates seamlessly with major eCommerce platforms, including Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Its main focus is SMS requests, loyalty and referrals, reviews collection, and visual user-generated content.
After exploring a bit further, we found that this platform meets most of the requirements for bigger enterprises, such as enterprise-grade security, dedicated customer service, and consolidated billing.
4. Onstipe
Onstipe is a user-generated content platform that makes collecting UGC incredibly simple and efficient. Simply add your hashtag and leave the rest up to Onstipe to gather content. After gathering UGC, you can style it to match the colors of your website or the subject of your event.
For me, the most remarkable UGC aggregator and presentation system is Onstipe. It mixes user- and brand-generated content to market your brand across a variety of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others. You will receive fantastic curation and moderation tools that let you prevent the presentation of irrelevant information.
Recomendation shared Dayna Carlin, Director of Marketing and Sales, NovoPath
5. CrowdRiff
CrowdRiff combines UGC discovery with global travel and tourism. As they state in their mission, they want to make travel good both for people and the planet.
They collect visual UGC that would inspire travelers to see the world from a different perspective and explore sustainably. The platform is a real visual content engine that focuses on travel brands.
The platform includes data integration tools for import/export and reporting capabilities, so I can measure how my visuals perform and impact my overall business growth. These features make CrowdRiff a powerful UGC visual marketing platform for effectively collecting, analyzing, and displaying user-generated content.
What makes CrowdRiff truly stand out from other UGC platforms is that it also offers comprehensive visual curation tools to help me create meaningful visual stories out of UGC that shoppers love engaging with.
Shared by Benjamin Okyere, Data Engineer, Stress Reliever:
6. Upfluence
Upfluence is an all-in-one affiliate and influencer marketing platform that provides UGC, in addition to its many other offerings. I’ve used Upfluence, which allows you to collaborate with the appropriate influencers to create original content for your company, streamline your marketing initiatives, and increase revenue.
The platform’s ability to assist you in bringing on influencers and ensuring their dedication to your campaign is its best feature. You may develop long-lasting connections and produce more user-generated content (UGC) that gains the trust and loyalty of your audience by adhering to each stage of collaboration.
Daniel Foley Carter, Founder, Daniel Foley SEO
7. Instagram
Instagram is one of the most popular social media networks and many marketers use it to natively to engage with customers via DMs and manually collect UGC.
Here is the experience shared by Seth Newman, Director, SportingSmiles
We have a customer program where, if they take a selfie with our product and post it on Instagram, we’ll send them a free cleaning kit. As a company, we craft oral products such as whitening trays, retainers, and night guards, so taking a selfie with these products that show off their teeth is a natural fit.
We include instructions to tag our account in the selfie, and the results have been great. Our account has grown by 200 followers each month, which is a lot for a small business, and the natural reaction to the selfies is always positive: “Your teeth look so great!”, “How did they get so white!”, “I need a new retainer too!” This leads to curious potential buyers coming to our Instagram page before heading to our site. Instagram is the perfect place for a selfie, and the selfie works great with our brand, so the best UGC platform for us is Instagram.
8. Trustpilot
Trustpilot is another tool that’s great for UGC campaigns. It’s a customer review management software that can be used in many niches such as banks, jewelry stores, travel insurance, energy supply, car dealerships, real estate, insurance, fitness, pet stores, and many more.
It is one of the most popular free customer review sites, with features such as review badges, a reviews page, consumer Intelligence, customer feedback, competitive intelligence, sentiment analysis, and corporate reporting.
They offer no free plans, but you can book a demo for all of the paid options.
9. Influee
Influee is a dynamic content creation platform that bridges the gap between brands and a worldwide network of creators, enabling the production of genuine user-generated videos and photos.
Its main goal is to help brands access fresh and diverse content on a large scale, especially for social media, advertising, and eCommerce purposes. Influee emphasizes creating a smooth content pipeline driven by real people rather than generic stock images.
The platform comes equipped with campaign management tools and performance insights, allowing me to effortlessly kick off projects, collaborate with creators, and monitor the outcomes. These features make Influee a smart choice for brands that depend on visual storytelling and aim to keep their content authentic, engaging, and impactful.
We’re extremely happy with the diversity and huge selection of quality creators experienced in making engaging advertising content that sells. Ads featuring Influee’s content have 2x-ed viewing time of our usual highly produced videos by top-tier creative agencies.
Ben Goodman, Co-Founder of AgeMate
10. Bazaarvoice
From ratings and reviews, Q&As, social and visual content, and much more, Bazaarvoice is a great content curation tool that gives total user control for collecting, displaying, and distributing relatable content. The industries it covers are apparel and accessories, consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, health, and beauty.
Bazaarvoice allows me to have a wide range of diverse customer feedback and insights that I can use to promote my brand. Bazaarvoice also allows me to analyze and moderate UGC to ensure it meets my brand guidelines and company policies. This enables me to maintain control over the content that is displayed on my website and social media channels, ensuring that it is appropriate and beneficial for my brand.
Michael McCarty, CEO, EDGE Fall Protection
11. Emplifi
Emplifi focuses mainly on commerce and not just any type but community-driven commerce. What differentiates it from the rest is that it’s the only unified platform for Social UGC, Influencer marketing, and ratings and reviews. The platform has fast and customizable UGC widgets that are asynchronous and don’t block the page from being loaded.
Their website has no pricing, but you can request a demo through their online forms.
12. Social News Desk
On the social media listening side, Social News Desk allows you to quickly search within a specified timeframe or date range across social networks such as Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and Reddit for relevant posts and comments according to keywords you decide on.
We use it to retrive both organic and paid campaigns from multiple sources at the same time, so you can track the performance of all your efforts in one place. Its “Listening” feature allows us to monitor brand mentions at scale.
Travis Lindemoen, Managing Director, nexus IT group
13. Nosto
With Nosto, you can easily find, curate, and publish UGC in real time on your website, social media channels, and other digital properties.
One of the best features of Stackla is its powerful analytics capabilities. It provides detailed insights into the performance of your UGC, such as the reach, engagement, and sentiment of each post. This allows you to identify which content resonates with your audience and prioritize it accordingly.
We use Nosto’s analytics to track trends in UGC and adapt strategy accordingly. Nosto also has a wide range of integrations, making sharing UGC on various platforms easy. For example, you can integrate Nosto with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube to easily post content on these social media networks, too.
Tristan Harris, Demand Generation Senior Marketing Manager, Thrive Agency.
14. Judge.me
As another great platform best suited for online stores, Judge.me is perfectly compatible with Shopify Online Store 2.0. You can use Judge.me to collect, share, and manage reviews on an e-commerce site. It is very intuitive and easy to use. Getting reviews from customers is easy because you can program and schedule review requests to be sent to customers automatically through the web, email, or SMS.
The customizable widget matches my online store’s design and displays reviews with text, photos, and videos. I can display reviews and star ratings on my product pages and a carousel of featured reviews on the home page.
Judge.me has many options that can cater to what I want with reviews. Curating reviews is easy because it can automatically publish after setting certain conditions to be met. We can reply to reviews publicly on the website or privately through email. Judge.me also detects spam reviews and inappropriate language to be dealt with accordingly.
Experience from Kevin Huang, Founder and CEO of Ambient Home US, using this platform:
15. Hootsuite
The most remarkable aspect of Hootsuite Insights is its ability to track conversations in multiple languages. With this feature, marketers can monitor public opinion on a product or service among both domestic and international audiences, allowing them to tailor their communications strategy accordingly.
Additionally, insights on user sentiment help give businesses valuable customer feedback, which they can use to improve their services and drive customer engagement. All these features make Hootsuite Insights the perfect platform for organizations that need to measure the success of their UGC campaigns.
The best user-generated content (UGC) platform I have ever used is Hootsuite. This comprehensive tool allows organizations to collect, sort, and analyze UGC from various sources, such as social media platforms or blogs, while also providing detailed graphical displays of the data.
Tasia Duske, CEO, Museum Hack
16. Greenfly
Greenfly is a platform that helps companies automate digital media collection, organization, and distribution. Its aim is to help brands gain the power of the most loyal brand advocates to increase social media reach and engagement and attract broader audiences.
Greenfy was shared as a UGC platform by Joe Flanagan, Founder of 90s Fashion World. Here are more details about his experience with Greenfy:
One of the main reasons I prefer Greenfly is its ability to allow me to collect and distribute UGC from brand advocates and influencers easily. The platform makes it easy for me to identify and engage with brand advocates and to give them the tools to create and share high-quality UGC on my behalf.
This can be a powerful way for me to expand my reach and tap into my advocates’ networks. Another advantage of Greenfly is its scalability. I can easily manage and track the performance of multiple UGC campaigns simultaneously across several channels and platforms.
Joe Flanagan, Founder of 90s Fashion World.
17. Disqus
Disqus is not a typical UGC platform, but it can be listed in this category mostly because it provides news and media brands with direct communication from their readers, who are able to submit their feedback, opinions, or topics for the articles that news brands share.
Disqus also provides various customizable features and settings, allowing users to easily customize their UGC experience to meet their individual needs best.
Here is an experience by a marketing expert:
Disqus provides an easy-to-use platform for managing user-generated content, allowing users to create posts and comment on existing posts. It also provides powerful tools for analyzing and filtering UGC, making finding the most relevant and meaningful content easier.
Brenton Thomas, CEO of Twibi Digital Marketing Agency
18. Pulsar
Pulsar has tools to collect UGC from various sources, including social media, surveys, and customer feedback. This allows businesses to gather valuable customer insights and data.
It also provides advanced analytics tools that can analyze UGC and provide insights into customer preferences, behavior, and sentiment. This allows businesses to make data-driven decisions and improve their marketing efforts.
Overall, Pulsar is a good choice for collecting, analyzing, and displaying UGC because it offers a comprehensive solution for businesses to gather valuable customer insights, improve their marketing efforts, and increase customer engagement.
Jason Moss, President and Co-Founder, Moss Technologies
How to choose a UGC platform for your brand?
When choosing a UGC platform, there are several key components to consider, all of which depend on the type of UGC campaigns you want to run and the type of customers you’re targeting.
That said, most of our users expect us to excel in the following areas:
- Feature set
- Setup complexity
- Ease of use
- Quality of support
- Overall costs
For instance, here’s how EmbedSocial stacks against the competition on G2:
Other key features of UGC platforms include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Aggregation: What type of content can they collect?
- Content and influencers discovery: Identifying content that mentions your brand and finding the key influencers sharing that content.
- Content curation: Aggregating content around a certain area or topic of interest (hashtags, channels, keywords, etc.)
- Rights management: You should be able to easily request usage rights from the creators who generated the social media content.
- Display: They should be able to display this UGC on various channels like websites, email, events, print, etc.
- Influencer management: They should enable you to track verified content creators and connect with them if you want to launch an influencer marketing campaign.
- Analytics: You should be able to see insights into user engagement and how your whole campaign is performing.
- Shoppable UGC widgets: This is one of the main features for e-commerce brands that want to reuse their UGC and sell more of their products with the help of existing customers.
So, you see, you should consider your needs carefully in order to make the best decision possible when choosing your next UGC platform. It will be one of the best partners you have!
Why use a UGC content platform for your business?
Generating and reusing content created by real people and customers can significantly impact your social media engagement efforts, provide trust for your websites, and possibly increase revenues by more than 10%. In summary, here’s why you need quality UGC software:
- Get access to high-quality content. Customers share priceless information about your brands, and with the right tools, you can collect it in just a few clicks and reuse it for marketing purposes.
- Identify potential loyal customers. By using social media monitoring tools as part of your UGC suite, you will discover customers who talk about your brand in a way you were not able to before.
- Cut the manual process of asking for content rights. Discovering content about your brand on social media is time-consuming, and asking for permission to reuse this content is double the time. You can completely automate the content rights process.
- Showcase social proof. With automation to aggregate and display Instagram posts or Google reviews on your website, you can show proof from real customers that will influence other website visitors to make better purchasing decisions.
- Reach the target audience. UGC solutions can help you find and reach people who are talking about your brand. By doing this, you can find and work with a UGC creator targeting the same people as you.
The importance of UGC for businesses
UGC allows customers and brands to establish a personal and authentic connection.
How? Customers share their thoughts about a certain brand and its products, which, when seen by their followers, constitutes word-of-mouth marketing.
Increases click-through rates
Per recent UGC statistics:
- When user-generated content is incorporated into email marketing, the click-through rates increase by 78%.
- Web conversions increase by 29% when user-generated content is included, and user-generated content-based ads see four times higher click-through rates.
Increases reach and engagement
When people see friends and family sharing positive experiences with a certain brand, they are more likely to buy from that brand themselves.
92% of consumers say that they trust people’s recommendations more than brands. Also, UGC posts on social media channels have a 28% higher engagement rate than branded content.
Increases sales numbers
Most importantly, UGC boosts sales and revenue numbers, which is the ultimate goal!
An astonishing 80% of consumers say they would buy from a brand that uses UGC.
UGC in Marketing: How often to use it according to 12 experts
Here is what 12 thought leaders working in marketing had to say about UGC:
UGC Lifts B2B Engagement and Inquiries 35%
UGC is a very powerful way of accelerating trust within the B2B marketing arena. Throughout our multiple campaigns for AI consulting, software / IT consulting and product development services, we have used client testimonials, client implementation successes and actual project deliverables on our landing pages, LinkedIn posts and case studies.
The difference in performance is measurable. Our campaigns that include these types of client experiences deliver 25-35% greater engagement and inquiry rates than campaigns consisting solely of brand messaging. For services such as AI implementation and cloud modernization, prospective clients want to see evidence that solutions are effective in real-world environments versus just having marketing claims made to them.
By creating UGC, we build customer success into evidence that strengthens the credibility of the brand and contributes positively to the conversion performance.
Vishal Solanki, Marketing Head, NITSAN
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Layered UGC Strategy Boosts CTR 55%
Hello!
I’m Himanshu Agarwal, co-founder of Zenius. In my 10+ years of marketing, I’ve consistently used UGC for my digital campaigns by dividing it into 3 main layers.
Many brands I’ve worked with had 30-60% of UGC or UGC-style creative assets on paid media channels. This is because such content mimics platform native content and enhances watch time.
These clients recorded an average CTR lift of 55% when they sparked such ads/branded content on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, etc.
Using product page reviews, customer photos/videos and community Q&A sections also increases buyer confidence. This layer often leads to an increase in PDP conversions and reduces bounce rates.
The last layer consists of testimonials, case studies, creator collaborations, etc. This helps to build a brand’s perceived authority and can be measured via sentiment analysis, review velocity, earned media mentions, etc.
I hope this helps!
Himanshu Agarwal, Co-Founder, Zenius
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Customer Photos Outconvert Product Images Fivefold
No product image is able to convert as well as an actual customer image in medical products.
I have found through my experience as Managing Director of Electric Wheelchairs USA that user-generated content (UGC) is not a supplemental marketing tool but rather the only form of content that can actually drive buyer movement. A real customer photo showing true independence and mobility will do something a staged product shot never will be able to do. Customer-generated content is five times more likely to convert than professional images in our industry, and the conversion gap feels much greater.
All of our highest converting product pages are completely void of any brand-produced imagery. Only real customers, real results, and real mobility appear on these pages. When we stopped competing against our customers for attention, and instead chose to feature their content our conversion rates improved almost immediately.
Kellon Ambrose, Managing Director, Electric Wheelchairs USA
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Testimonials Elevate Lead Quality and Close Rates
Hello EmbedSocial team,
To be honest, I use user-generated content pretty regularly because it brings a level of credibility that polished brand messaging just doesn’t have. Reviews, testimonials, and client feedback highlight real experiences, and that authenticity goes a long way in building trust with potential customers. You know, when people see others talking about positive outcomes, it naturally reinforces the idea that the company delivers real value.
When it comes to measurement, we look closely at engagement, conversion rates, and the quality of incoming leads. In most cases, campaigns that feature testimonials and reviews perform noticeably better and generate stronger inquiries. Very often, prospects who reference reviews during consultations already feel confident about the brand, which helps improve close rates and revenue.
Sasha Berson
Co-Founder and Chief Growth Executive at Grow Law
501 E Las Olas Blvd, Suite 300, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33301
About expert: https://growlaw.co/sasha-berson
Website: https://growlaw.co/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aleksanderberson
Headshot: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1OqLe3z_NEwnUVViCaSozIOGGHdZUVbnq/view?usp=sharing
Sasha Berson, Grow Chief Executive, Grow Law Firm
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Structured UGC Doubles Conversions and Cuts CPA
In terms of marketing , especially in industries where trust matters most, i.e. education — user-generated content is probably the least utilized tool to help you grow. We heavily depend on user-generated content as a significant component of our overall brand ecosystem, but we do not use it as simply a campaign tactic; we use it consistently throughout our marketing strategy.
When parents tell their stories of their children’s online learning experience, no advertisement will be able to match the credibility of their experience. Over time, Nielsen has proven time and time again that consumers trust their peers to provide them with recommendations (via UGC) than they trust a brand’s advertising messages, and we have seen the same in our own data. Family-created content (customer testimonies, student stories, videos of a typical day in the life of a student) has produced a significantly higher level of customer engagement and a lower cost per acquisition compared to traditional ads.
However, what is essential is that user-generated content must be structured. We measure progress related to user-generated content by looking at a variety of metrics — referral traffic, conversion rates, and assisted conversions measured in our CRM. In a number of cases, user-generated content produced conversion rates of 2-3 times higher than what we have experienced with traditional promotional content.
For brands today, the real question is not whether or not they will utilize user-generated content. The true question is how purposefully and thoughtfully you develop infrastructure that encourages your community to create user-generated content. When your audience feels that they are engaged in your story as opposed to being targets of your marketing, both your reputation and your revenue will often follow.
Vasilii Kiselev, CEO & Co-Founder, Legacy Online School
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Rewards-Fueled UGC Powers Our Coupon Platform
User-generated content is the very basis of our entire operation. As a couponing website, we’re a service that lets users provide and share coupons within the community. Without that, we wouldn’t be able to function nearly to the extent that we do.
As a result, we’ve structured the system to encourage users to share coupons. One way we do this is with a reward system we call Pays-2-Share. This rewards a user a percentage of the commission when a coupon they shared is redeemed. It creates strong motivation for people to find good coupons to share, because the higher the value the coupon offers others, the higher the return they can expect.
In terms of results, it’s been very effective. User-generated coupons allow for a much larger number to be shared and ensure they’re always up to date.
Gary Gray, CEO, CouponChief.com
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UGC Ads Outperform Search for DTC
For us, user-generated content is an essential part of any paid advertising strategy, especially for DTC brands. This is particularly true for lower-priced products with a broad audience.
We actively use this type of content in top-of-funnel campaigns, especially across YouTube Shorts and social media. Today, it is one of the strongest ways to generate demand and build brand awareness.
What matters even more is that this traffic does not just create interest in the brand. In many cases, it can even outperform high-intent search traffic in terms of conversion.
Yulian Hrab, Founder, Excella PPC
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Authentic Testimonials Nearly Double Conversion Rates
Companies can greatly improve their reputation as well as their overall financial performance by providing a significant amount of value through the use of authentic social proof with customer testimonials in order to lower acquisition cost. In addition to establishing authenticity and building trust with customers, using the testimonial of an actual customer to help support the marketing message of the company has been shown to nearly double the conversion rate of that marketing message when compared to the same marketing message with no customer testimonial.
Robert Fausette, Owner & CEO, Revival Homebuyer
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Client Reviews Drive Inquiries and Program Improvements
Reviews are a very important part of our business. They give us a true representation of the experience that our clients had with us. In a business like ours, which is more service-oriented, people usually like to hear about other people’s experiences before deciding.
We encourage all of our clients to submit reviews after completing their training program. The reviews will help prospective clients determine what they may reasonably expect when using our services. At the same time, it will help us know what we’re doing right and what we’re doing wrong. Reviews not only help us as a form of advertising, but also help us understand how to improve our programs to ensure we’re meeting the expectations of our clients.
Reviews have actually become one of the most powerful drivers of new inquiries over time. Most clients will come to us saying they read other people’s reviews, which led them to us. In a way, the reviews help us with our reputation as a business
Maria Vazquez, Head of Training, MYWOWFIT
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Peer Reviews Sway 89% and Lift Conversions
We constantly add UGC in our marketing. An eSIM is an invisible digital product. Therefore, potential customers rely heavily on others’ visible experiences when buying.
We use UGC in three ways. First is social proof. We curate and share stories from travelers using our services in specific towns. Most times, we repost any mentions and tags we get as soon as we get it.
Second, we have a referral program to incentivize our community to share their personal Mobal links. Third, we add testimonials in our blog and product pages to provide our travelers with the high-intent information they desire.
We measure our Trust Score on independent platforms, with 4.8/5 stars being our most impactful. 89% of our customers admit that the peer reviews were their deciding factor in choosing us. We also look at the conversion rate. Blog posts with user photos, reviews, and short videos get a 9% higher conversion rate than those with branded graphics. Our audience sees reviews as a community recommendation, a go-ahead to buy.
Oleksii Sosnovenko, Digital Marketer, Mobal
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UGC Improves ROI and Strengthens Brand Reputation
As an example of the above I use user-generated content in many cases as part of my marketing strategy that builds on trusting relationships with users of the platform. The relationship that can be created using this approach is a relationship between a brand and the people who are the target audience for that brand. In many cases when I have used this type of marketing versus the typical adverting methods I find that I have better (ROI) Return On Investment and better (reputation) reputation of the platform than I would have had I used traditional advertising methods. Therefore the positive results of using user generated content as part of my marketing strategy contribute positively to the bottom line of the business.
Darcy Turner, Founder, Investor Home Buyers
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Student UGC Boosts Course Conversions by 30%
According to a Stackla report from 2023, 88% of consumers report that authenticity is a factor in which brands they support and user-generated content is the most authentic content they encounter.
This is why over the last 2 years, UGC has accounted for about 60% of our social content on Instagram and Facebook. That’s not a strategy that we planned from day one. It grew organically as our student community across 125+ countries began to share their experiences, their certifications, their practice transformations after completing our 200-hour and 300-hour Yoga Teacher Training programs, our Yin yoga and prenatal yoga courses and our 7-day wellness programs for stress and insomnia. (We began to actively promote it, creating systems around it and using it as a primary content channel only after seeing what it was doing on its own.)
We now rely on it as heavily as we do because honestly, not one of the branded posts we’ve ever created has built trust the way a student photo with a caption about how our Ayurveda certification changed their approach to health has. People who buy online wellness education aren’t just looking for credentials. They’re looking for proof that real people, people that look like them and started where they started, actually did this course and got something meaningful out of it. UGC provides them with that proof in a way that a neat graphic never does.
On the bottom line level, we’ve kept track of it directly. Course enrollment pages that include actual student testimonials and community photos on our site convert about 30% more than pages without them and that difference has remained consistent throughout our teacher training programs and specialty courses alike.
Meera Watts, Holistic Yoga Expert & Entrepreneur | CEO and Founder, Siddhi Yoga
Conclusion: Sign up for a UGC platform to grow your brand!
Harnessing the power of UGC is a must for any marketing strategy nowadays since it enables brands to connect with their audience in a more authentic, personal way.
With the right UGC platform, you can increase your brand’s trustworthiness, reach, and engagement, thus building stronger relationships with your customers.
That’s why it’s very important to carefully explore all the options presented above and see everything they offer so you can find the right UGC platform for your business.
FYI: You can embed user-generated content on your website automatically. Sign up now.
FAQs about UGC platforms
What is UGC in social media?
In the context of social media, UGC refers to any form of content, such as images, videos, text, and audio, created and posted by unpaid users on sites like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.
How do you make money with UGC?
UGC creators have several avenues to monetize the content creation and distribution of UGC across the internet, including but not limited to selling products or services, promoting a certain brand, offering subscription-based models, participating in affiliate programs, etc.
Is TikTok a UGC platform?
Most definitely! TikTok allows users to create, upload, and share short-form videos, often accompanied by music, filters, and other effects, which brands can reuse for promotional purposes.
How much does UGC cost?
In most cases, UGC can be obtained free of charge since regular users are happy to be included in the marketing campaigns of their favorite brands. That said, to obtain one piece of UGC from popular influencers, brands would have to pay a certain asking price, typically starting at $150.
What are the best platforms for user-generated content in 2026?
If you are looking for the best UGC platform for brands, you should first consider your actual business needs, such as whether you only need UGC aggregation or you’re also looking for more features, like social listening and shoppable UGC widgets. In any case, some platforms, like EmbedSocial, do it all!
What’s the best UGC platform for e-commerce brands?
When looking for a UGC platform for your e-commerce business, you should definitely find one that offers embeddable and shoppable UGC widgets, which streamline the shopping experience. EmbedSocial’s shoppable widget can be created in seconds via an advanced AI editor.
