What Is User Generated Content?
UGC is a new form of content that’s hit social media and other platforms since 2021. In a shift to display more authentic and personal content from brands, UGC has filled a gap in the market for this.
UGC Is short for User Generated Content, a form of content where an online creator or personality reviews a brand or product, authentically documenting their experience and showcasing the service or product, typically in a good light. These videos are free marketing for businesses and act as a way for other potential buyers or customers to see genuine, unfiltered opinions of products online.
Can I be paid for UGC?
There has been a shift away from UGC being a free form of marketing for businesses. It’s now more common for online smaller creators being paid a one time fee by larger businesses to create more authentic, personality driven reviews of their products and/or services.
How much does this border on paid advertising? Effectively this has now merged into paid advertising, larger businesses will now pay creators to create the authentic content and then display it on their own business page as a natural and authentic review of their product.
Do businesses have to display this as a paid ad? No, in the same way a business may hire an actor to show off their products in TV Commercials, they don’t need to disclaim that they’re paying the actor, this is just assumed. There could potentially be legislation in future that could stop businesses promoting user generated content and not displaying the fact that the creators were paid by businesses for positive feedback.
How do you start with UGC?
You don’t need a big following to start with UGC, if you can create high quality, clear content then you’re on the right path to creating UGC content. Reach out to smaller businesses, explain to them the process and see if they’d like to work together for free content, they can provide you a service or product for free and you can return them some user generated content for their social media and your portfolio.Â
It’s best to focus your UGC on a specific niché e.g. beauty or tech, this will give you a stand out USP when larger businesses are looking to outsource their UGC creators.Â
Is UGC the way forward?
UGC allows smaller creators to get paid for their work without need 100,000+ followers. It’s slowly becoming a better alternative to the commonly known paid influencer and sponsors that we’ve been used to in the social media marketing space. It’s important that creators capitalize on this, due to the ease of entering into this space the market will become very over saturated and there will be a huge range of different creators to choose from all with their unqiue twist and USP. Focusing solely on a niché and understanding the needs and wants of the market will greatly help you grow your UGC business. At the end of the day a company will be hiring you to increase their profits, and the ability to create content that resonates and sells that businesses product is going to be the best way to land yourself more UGC gigs.
