In recent years, user-generated content (UGC) has emerged as a growth channel for small businesses. After all, it helps entrepreneurs build a strong connection with their audience, create a community around their brand, and deepen their customer engagement.
Just like Coca-Cola’s groundbreaking “Share a Coke” UGC campaign, which bumped the company’s sales by 2% in the U.S., you can use UGC to create an emotionally appealing campaign that will get your customers talking and sharing your brand’s awesomeness.
So, let’s learn the meaning of UGC, highlight its benefits, especially for small businesses looking to grow, and check out a few inspirational examples.
What is user-generated content (UGC)?
So what does UGC stand for, and what is it used for? Here’s the run-down:
User-generated content (aka UGC or consumer-generated content) is a marketing term that refers to a form of original content created and published by brand customers and advocates across their social media channels and online platforms.
Essentially, UGC is the content your users create in support (or not) of your business. As such, it’s the perfect social proof to boost your marketing efforts since it comes with various benefits and in different forms, including UGC videos, photos, testimonials, etc.
Here’s an example of a review about EmbedSocial:
Differences between user-generated and influencer content
While user-generated content (UGC) and influencer-generated content (IGC) are created by people who do not work for the company in question, the brand has some control over the second type as it collaborates with influencers to generate the content.
Here’s how both types of content compare to each other:
As you can see, modern businesses should use both types of content to boost their marketing efforts since the first one fosters genuine authenticity and encourages user engagement, while the second one leverages the influencer’s fame for targeted reach.
Types of consumer-generated content
UGC comes in different flavors, each with its own pros and cons when it comes to planning the perfect marketing strategy and reaching your audience. That said, you should combine more than one of the following types of UGC to cater to different customer segments:
- Social media photos & videos – this category includes all the engaging, visually rich posts that consumers share across social media, including images in feeds, stories, Instagram reels, and videos that highlight the user’s real experience with a brand;
- Customer reviews, testimonials, and ratings – customer reviews, testimonials, and ratings are organic UGC that can be found on Google, social platforms, on your product pages, and via review aggregators like Tripadvisor, Yelp, G2, and Trustpilot;
- Recommendations in tweets, groups, or forums – people give recommendations on social media for the products and services they purchase. Therefore, Facebook groups, various forums, and even X are popular destinations for prospective buyers;
- Customer interviews & case studies – long-form customer interviews and success stories are great at revealing the advantages and disadvantages of products and work wonders to prompt purchases, especially in B2B industries for significant purchases;
- Blog posts with expert reviews – this very particular format is most effective in industries such as travel, tech or gadgets, fashion, and food, but in general, it can be applied to any service or product because it takes an expert to evaluate your product;
- DIY & how-to content – social media users now create DIY and how-to content for products they’ve been using for a long time and often in unique ways; this content is authentic, relatable, user-centric, and offers real-life insights into product features.
To take full advantage of this type of UGC, establish an online reputation management process that manages and showcases your best customer reviews.
Imagine the benefits you get once you embed such content on your website.
Other UGC types based on their source
We should also cover employee-generated content (EGC) and paid UGC, which include certain incentives, unlike the unprompted organic UGC mentioned above.
Employee-generated content (EGC)
Similar to organic UGC, employee-generated content (EGC) is authentic content covering your brand, products, and services. The difference is that it’s created by your employees instead of random customers on social media, forums, and other online platforms. This content offers an authentic view of the company’s culture and operations, a unique perspective that external UGC can’t capture. Plus it humanizes the brand and showcases its values and the team behind its success.
As an example, check out this friendly Ferrari post showcasing their two F1 drivers having fun during the Grand Prix weekend in Japan:
Paid user-generated content
Instead of looking for unprompted UGC on social media, you can also collaborate with UGC creators who will make and distribute fresh and engaging content for you.
The process starts when brands search for influencers or content creators who specialize in their niche market, such as fashion, food, travel, or similar. Once they discover them, they incentivize them to use their products or services and share their experiences.
For example, check out this customer sharing a series of photos via Instagram Stories of a brand gift they’ve received:
Sources of user-generated content
Anyone can create UGC nowadays as modern consumers have access to the internet and different social media platforms where they post text updates, photos, videos, reels, and everything in between. Therefore, you’ll be able to collect UGC from users such as:
- Everyday social media users – regular users on social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube are the largest group that creates UGC as they love sharing their life experiences and opinions about various brands and products;
- Brand customers and advocates – your actual customers and brand advocates will also often share reviews, testimonials, photos, and videos of the products and services they’ve used on platforms like Google, Amazon, Yep, Tripadvisor, etc.;
- Mainstream and micro-influencers – partnering with social media users with large followings (or a smaller and engaged audience) can help you create genuine content that will reach a very targeted niche and achieve your marketing goals;
- Professional content creators – travel enthusiasts, photographers, gamers, artists, activists, and other groups of bloggers and creatives post high-quality content on social media, and they would make great partners for your UGC marketing campaign.
All of these creators like sharing their experiences, knowledge, opinions, and creativity without requiring any particular incentive from you. This is the authenticity that helps you use UGC to influence trends and opinions, and tip over your website visitors into loyal followers.
Benefits of user-generated content in 2024
UGC is the golden ticket in the digital marketing funnel due to its super-efficient returns, as it costs little to nothing to get and use. Plus, it comes with several benefits:
- Humanizes your brand – there’s no better way to build trust in your brand than to humanize it and bring it closer to your customers—UGC does that extremely well since consumers trust its raw and unsolicited authenticity;
- Adds authenticity & credibility – this uniquely authentic content drives higher engagement, which is evident from the surge in comments, likes, and brand mentions by down-to-earth customers praising you on social media;
- Influences your conversion rates – UGC significantly influences the consumer decision-making process, which ultimately tips over potential visitors to loyal customers and brand advocates since they are more inclined to buy from you;
- Rebuilds your brand trust and offsets negative perceptions – UGC helps in (re)building or strengthening the loyalty and trust consumers have in your brand and services, especially if you have faced challenges or are new to the market;
- Empowers and educates your customers – UGC also serves as an educational tool for prospective customers. They can ask/share their knowledge, get and give recommendations to others, and get usage tips and tricks about certain products;
- Costs less time and money than brand content – you can focus on other marketing strategy areas since you don’t need to pay for new content as you can reuse your Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok UGC, or collect reviews and testimonials;
- Offers continued engagement on social media – by collecting UGC, you create an active community around your brand, providing continuous feedback and insights for improvement; remember: everyone wants to feel like their voice matters;
- Boosts your SEO efforts via customer reviews – incorporating customer reviews enhances your SEO strategy, improving online visibility and accessibility since Google will show customers your best-reviewed solutions first.
You can reap all these benefits if you create a comprehensive UGC strategy that fully utilizes the content you’ve obtained from everyday customers. Once you do that, you’ll gain much more than boosted sales—you’ll build a healthier brand in the long term.
Here are some relevant UGC statistics that further support the point:
FYI: You can embed user-generated content on your website automatically. Sign up now.
Top 7 examples of user-generated content in action
Need fresh ideas for your next user-generated marketing strategy?
Take a look at these great examples of users and companies leveraging customer-generated content to increase brand awareness and grow their online reach.
1. Steven Wommack creates engaging Instagram tutorials
Valuable user-generated content (UGC) doesn’t come more impactful than how-to tutorials created by Instagram influencers who explain how to best use a certain feature. For instance, @stevenwommack shows his hordes of loyal fans how to use Reels here:
2. CLUSE shows off UGC photos on their website
The watch company CLUSE wants to inspire potential buyers to create the ultimate look using their products. The way they do that is by posting all the UGC they collect of everyday consumers wearing CLUSE items, and these followers only had to tag #CLUSE on Instagram:
3. Cybertruck customers fuel a viral UGC movement
The launch of Tesla’s Cybertruck ignited a massive organic UGC campaign that boosted the product’s buzz, predominantly driven by new customers sharing their excitement through social media posts, including road tests and showcases of the vehicle’s features.
The result: one of the best social media marketing campaigns out there that became a powerful testament to the product’s appeal and customer satisfaction. Here’s how entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian shared his experience with the Cybertruck on social media:
4. Outdoor Voices creates successful hashtag campaigns
The athletic wear company Outdoor Voices is on a mission to get the world moving. To reach their goal, they invite their customers to get moving and show the world how they do it with the hashtag #DoingThings while wearing the brand’s clothing:
5. GoPro has nailed the UGC game from the start
Do you know who has the best consumer content out there?
GoPro! Yes, camera company, and they do that by letting their customers show off the awesomeness of their products, and they don’t even have to spend a cent for that!
As an example, check out GoPro’s Million Dollar Challenge, which has generated a ton of free marketing content thanks to customers sharing all kinds of thrilling videos:
6. ChatGPT owes much of its growth to creators’ content
Social media creators and thought leaders on professional platforms like LinkedIn and YouTube proved to be a driving force in the growth of today’s most popular AI language model. All they keep on doing is showing the public the best ways to use ChatGPT.
Here’s one such example offered by YouTuber Daragh Walsh:
7. Spotify Wrapped is everyone’s favorite musical journey
As many of you might know, Spotify Wrapped is an innovative and widely celebrated user-generated content campaign that has become a yearly tradition for its users.
What it entails is a personalized wrap-up of the yearly listening adventures of the platform’s users, which helps the brand develop a relationship with its consumers. After all, music is part of everyone’s journey, and Spotify shows us just how important that is.
Users love sharing their #SpotifyWrapped across social media:
Where do brands utilize user-generated content?
Once you collect all the UGC you need, what’s next?
You need to start using the content in your marketing efforts by repurposing and embedding your UGC where it will have the most impact, such as here:
1. Use UGC in your social media campaigns
Example: Dove’s #RealBeauty campaign
Dove’s #RealBeauty campaign is a pioneering use of user-generated content that challenges beauty stereotypes and promotes body positivity as it encourages women to share their own stories, photos, and videos on social media to redefine what beauty means:
2. Place reviews on your wall of love
Example: Leisuretec’s ‘Wall of Love’ page
This new trend sees companies and brands creating entire web pages full of reviews and testimonials so their visitors are welcomed by all the great things customers have to say about them. One great example of that is Leisuretec’s ‘Wall of Love’ page:
3. Enhance your website content with it
Example: Airbnb showcases its hosts’ stories
Airbnb features stories from its hosts on its website, thus providing social proof of the quality and diversity of its accommodations and building a deeper connection with both current and potential hosts and guests, which sets it apart from traditional hotels:
4. Make a shoppable feed with it
Example: ASOS’s #AsSeenOnMe shoppable feed
Some brands embed their customers’ photos from social media on their websites and tag the products their customers are wearing or using to build the perfect ‘Shop my feed’ section. That way, they showcase the product in action and streamline the shopping experience. Here’s how ASOS uses the #AsSeenOnMe hashtag to create the perfect shoppable Instagram feed:
5. Boost your customer support and FAQ sections
Example: Sephora’s Beauty Insider community
Sephora’s Beauty Insider Community is a platform where customers can ask questions and share beauty tips, recommendations, and product reviews, and this peer-to-peer advice exchange enhances the shopping experience for the brand’s customers:
6. Include it in your contests & giveaways
Example: National Geographic’s #WanderlustContest
To enhance its website with engaging user-generated content, National Geographic launched the #WanderlustContest, inviting travelers from around the globe to submit their own photos capturing the essence of exploration and adventure and add the #wanderlustcontest tag to them. The prize? various travel and photography expeditions with the Nat Geo team:
7. Add it to your email campaigns
Example: Glossier’s email campaigns
The beauty brand Glossier often incorporates UGC into its email marketing campaigns to showcase customer favorites and feature real user testimonials as seen below. These emails serve as personalized product recommendations and foster a sense of community:
8. Design your advertisements with it
Example: Apple’s “Shot on iPhone” campaign
Apple often features photos and videos taken by iPhone users in its advertising campaigns in the real world to highlight the phone camera’s capabilities and put their users’ creativity front and center, serving as powerful social proof of the product’s quality. Check out how these images were printed and placed on billboards in various locations:
7 tips to start with user-generated content
Once you embrace consumer-generated content as an asset in your social media marketing toolset, follow a few standard tips and tricks to maximize your returns:
- Make your brand shareable—consider what is unique about your products and what you can do to facilitate a great experience for your customers: packaging, great service, a delivery surprise, an unexpected birthday card, a community event, and so on;
- Choose the right social networks—think about where your audience interacts online and where your potential customers and advocates could have the most significant influence. For instance, an e-shopping brand should use a visual platform like Instagram;
- Request permission to share content—you must devise and implement a robust system to obtain permission to use someone’s UGC, express your appreciation for the content in question, and promise the creator greater exposure once you reshare it;
- Credit the content creator—always tag the original content creator directly in the post, which makes it easier for fans and followers to verify that the content is authentic and created by a customer outside your company;
- Offer something in return—social media contests and giveaways are a great way to generate a substantial amount of UGC quickly. So next time you want your followers to provide you with user-generated content, consider what you can offer them in return;
- Analyze and measure your content—UGC metrics are great for customer research. So, take a closer look at how buyers are using your brand and what language they use to describe it. You might discover new ways of using your products!
- Re-use content across marketing channels—Your customer-generated content is also very flexible, allowing you to use it anywhere you are present, including your website and all your social media platforms.
Follow future UGC trends
The future of user-generated content (UGC) marketing points toward more immersive and integrated experiences. For that reason, e-commerce will further embrace UGC, embedding customer reviews, photos, and videos directly on product pages.
Also, video and live-stream UGC, including potential VR/AR experiences, will become more prominent, driven by platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels, and AI will tailor UGC to individual interests, enhancing personalization and engagement.
Finally, testimonials and case studies will become crucial for trust-building in B2B marketing, whereas smaller D2C brands are expected to pivot towards niche-focused influencer partnerships, valuing community engagement over greater reach.
Enhance your UGC via a robust UGC platform
One of the biggest advantages of the best UGC platforms is that they allow you to create interactive UGC widgets from your best content and embed the UGC on a website.
For instance, a comprehensive user-generated content software like EmbedSocial will automatically collect all the customer-generated content mentioning your brand, display it into interactive website widgets, and provide you with insightful metrics about their impact on your conversion rates.
Also, consider your actual needs. For instance, if you are an e-commerce brand, you will want to create shoppable UGC feeds and automatically get UGC rights.
FYI: You can embed user-generated content on your website automatically. Sign up now.
Conclusion: Consumers trust content created by other users!
Instead of overselling your product with pricey social media marketing strategies, let others show the world just how good it is by repurposing their original content.
To get such content, encourage shoppers, professional content creators, micro-influencers, and industry experts to describe your brand in their own words and style.
However, as an online business, you should also be open to criticism by consumers and be willing to turn every piece of negative customer feedback into a lesson learned.
In any case, rely on UGC platforms as they can help you aggregate all the authentic user-generated content in one place and use it to enhance your marketing efforts.
FAQs about the UGC meaning
Why is UGC important for your social media channels?
UGC will help you connect with your target audiences. Also, it provides valuable insight into what consumers are interested in and how they perceive your brand.
What is user-generated content marketing?
User-generated content marketing involves leveraging content creation by existing customers or fans, instead of the brand, to promote products or services. It’s valued for its authenticity and ability to foster community engagement around a brand.
What is a user-generated content platform?
UGC platforms are SaaS software solutions that provide functionalities to easily aggregate, store, and reuse the customer content shared on social media or other channels and online profiles. For example, EmbedSocial is a complete UGC platform that enables brands to collect and embed social media posts or reviews published by other people on Facebook and Google.
How to get user-generated content?
The best way to get user-generated content is by incentivizing or encouraging your customers to share their experiences. For example, ask them to write testimonials in return for swag or create ‘deliberate’ experiences that people won’t hesitate to talk about and share, such as exciting packaging, social initiatives, exceptional customer support, etc.
How can I encourage UGC?
You can encourage more users to generate UGC content for your brand in a few different ways, including hosting competitions and giveaways, generating content, using hashtags to encourage social media engagement, and featuring UGC on your website or blog.
Are there any risks associated with using UGC?
There are a few risks associated with using user-generated content. This includes the potential for negative or fake reviews, copyright issues, and reliance on social media platforms. So make sure that you get full permission to reuse your customers’ content, especially if you display their images or other content in mass-marketing campaigns.
