What is User-Generated Content (UGC)?

Although user-generated content isn't produced by the brand it features, businesses treat it as a marketing channel. The reason is trust. Nielsen's 2021 Trust in Advertising study found that 88% of global respondents trust recommendations from people they know more than any other channel. A friend's post about a product carries weight no ad can buy, so an intentional UGC strategy encourages customers to post about a business on their own accounts, where every mention also works as a social signal.

UGC covers far more than social posts. Reviews on retail sites, blog comments, forum threads, and Q&A answers on your own site all count: if a user made it rather than your marketing team, it's UGC. It also cuts both ways. Positive posts signal brand loyalty, but one-star reviews and complaint threads are user-generated too, which is why smart brands monitor UGC instead of just collecting it.

Share a Coke: a UGC campaign that worked

Coca-Cola's Share a Coke campaign, launched in Australia in 2011, replaced the logo on bottles with popular first names so customers would hunt for their own name and share the bottle with friends. Ogilvy, the agency behind the Australian campaign, estimated it increased Coke's share of the category by 4% and lifted young-adult consumption by 7%, and the campaign went on to run in more than 80 countries. The takeaway: people don't post ads, they post things that feel personal, so give them something personal to post.

How brands encourage UGC

You can't order customers to post, but you can make posting easy and worth their while:

• Create a branded hashtag and put it where customers will see it: packaging, receipts, and confirmation emails.
• Ask for reviews right after purchase or delivery, while the experience is fresh.
• Run contests and giveaways where posting is the entry, and tell entrants to disclose the incentive (more on that below).
• Feature customer content on your own channels, with permission, so contributors get exposure in return.

Start with the one platform your customers already use, and make the ask specific: a hashtag, a review link, a question to answer.

UGC and SEO

On-site UGC, such as reviews, comments, and forum threads, adds fresh, keyword-rich content that search engines index as part of your site. That's an asset when the contributions are real and a liability when they're spam, so moderation belongs in any UGC plan. Google also asks site owners to qualify links that appear inside user-generated content: its Search Central documentation recommends marking UGC links, such as those in comments and forum posts, with the rel="ugc" attribute. Like the nofollow attribute, it tells Google what your relationship with the linked page is: this link came from a user, not from you.

UGC vs. influencer marketing

The two overlap, but they're different tools, and a third category now sits between them:

• Organic UGC is unpaid content real customers post on their own accounts. The brand doesn't control it, and that independence is exactly why people trust it.
• Influencer content is commissioned and published on the influencer's own channel. The brand pays for reach and for the creator's relationship with their audience.
• Paid UGC creators are paid to make customer-style photos and videos that the brand licenses and runs on its own channels and in ads. The content borrows the organic look, but it's brand-controlled media.

If you're paying for the content, treat it as advertising, disclosure rules included.

Reuse rights and disclosure

Two legal points before you repost a customer's photo. First, the person who created the content owns the copyright to it, so get explicit permission or a license before republishing it on your channels or in ads. A public post isn't permission. Second, the FTC's endorsement guides, revised in 2023, say a connection consumers wouldn't expect, such as payment or a free product, should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. A giveaway entry is an incentive too, so tell contest participants to disclose it in their posts. These are US rules; if you market elsewhere, check the local advertising regulator's guidance before running the same campaign.