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User-generated content (UGC) is a sweeping trend at the intersection of social media, ecommerce and short-form video’s explosive growth. For brands, it’s also a marketing opportunity. Brands want relatable human beings with whom their consumers can identify to create content that promotes their products and values.
But now, in the age of millions of user-generated social media posts, how can brands account for all of the content out there that’s associated with their name? The dawn of generative AI tools only adds to the problem, piling on unrelatable, machine-built images and videos, leaving brands to sort through mountains of artificial content.
If brands can’t assess the landscape of their associated content online, how can they leverage the opportunity to move the needle on their marketing goals with relatable human narratives while avoiding brand-unsafe associations?
A new kind of UGC is taking shape: brand-directed user-generated content. With it, brands can still leverage the local connections and relatability of everyday customers and creators, but they can also shape UGC messaging, review the content to ensure brand safety and own the content to control how it’s shared.
Here’s how brands can exert control over their UGC to leverage it for their advantage, why safety and standardization must underpin shared solutions between brands and creators, and how companies can activate hyper-local creators to drive business outcomes in local communities and stores.
Related: The Beginner’s Guide to User-Generated Content
Give clear instructions for content creation
As brands explore the possibilities of partnering with everyday creators, a number of benefits immediately present themselves. The cost savings of working with accessible creators versus big-name influencers or even traditional advertising agencies speak for themselves. Affordability makes it easier for brands to…
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