Leveraging user-generated content (UGC) on Instagram is an effective way to strengthen your content strategy.
Not only does it allow you to diversify your posts and better represent your community, but it’s also the best way to crowd-source beautiful, scroll-stopping content for your feed.
But finding and collecting the right UGC for your brand can be seriously hard work.
Fortunately, there are ways to make the whole process much easier. In this blog post, we’re sharing our top UGC tips to elevate your feed aesthetic and improve your workflow:
Why Share User-Generated Content on Instagram
More than ever, businesses and brands are integrating user-generated content into their social media strategy — reposting fans’ feed photos and videos, Instagram Stories, IGTV, and Reels.
And it’s no surprise.
UGC is an affordable way to share high-quality content on Instagram, while also bringing your community together.
Incorporating UGC into your feed can also be a powerful sales strategy, with 55% of consumers trusting user-generated content more than any other form of marketing.
It’s the social media equivalent of a word-of-mouth recommendation.
Whatever your social media goals, you can benefit from including UGC in your social media strategy.
In fact, some of the most successful influencers and brands regularly include community posts in their content plan.
For example, we share UGC on an almost daily basis on ’s Instagram account, and it consistently performs well and drives engagement with our audience.
If you’re not sharing user-generated content on Instagram yet, now could be the time to get started. Here’s how:
Step #1: Plan Your User-Generated Content Strategy
There are plenty of ways to add user-generated content to your Instagram content calendar, but you should choose a strategy that best supports your business goals.
If you’re mainly focused on raising product awareness, it’s a good idea to use UGC that features your products.
Other brands use UGC to spark creativity and act as a source of inspiration for their community — like @Over’s monthly design competition.
You could also use UGC to strengthen your brand’s Instagram aesthetic.
Feature accounts (made up solely of UGC) often have a strong visual aesthetic that acts as their brand identity.
For example, The Noisetier uses tonal lifestyle-related UGC to create a beautiful and evocative feed.
And remember, UGC doesn’t have to be limited to your Instagram feed. Depending on your goals, you can also use UGC on Instagram Stories, IGTV, and Reels.
Step #2: Find Relevant UGC That Aligns With Your Brand
Once you’ve set your UGC goals, you can start gathering content that helps you achieve them.
The easiest way to do this is by encouraging your audience to tag relevant content with a branded hashtag — they’re like a filing system that everyone in your community can use to help you collect UGC.
For example, Sezane hosts a weekly giveaway and encourages their community to share photos with #SezaneLovers to enter.
It’s a good idea to make your branded hashtag as unique as possible, as this will keep your content stream neat and tidy.
And once your hashtag is set, you can use ’s Search by Hashtag feature to easily search and repost content tagged with it on Instagram.
All you need to do is search for your branded hashtag, select the posts you’d like to share on your feed, and schedule them to your content calendar.
Similarly, you can use ’s Mentions and Tags feature to quickly review all the posts you have been mentioned or tagged in — which is another quick and easy way to find UGC.
Simply click the Mentions or Tags button on the left-hand side of your dashboard to start the search:
You can then scroll through the list of posts that appear. Once you spot something you’d like to share on your own feed, you can open the post and click Add to Media Library, so it’s ready to add to your content calendar.
If you’re still a little light on tagged content, you can always source high-quality UGC by searching and scrolling on Instagram.
One of the best ways to do this is by following accounts and hashtags that are aligned with your aesthetic.
TIP: Set up a Collections folder to save potential UGC Instagram posts as you scroll past them in your feed.
All you have to do is tap the save button below the image or video:
From here, you can start a Collection to house all your UGC-related posts in one place — making it super simple to review what you want to share on your feed in the future.
When you’ve reposted an image from your Collection, simply unsave it to remove it from the folder.
Want to use to easily find and curate UGC for your feed? Upgrade to a Growth plan to search by Hashtag, Tags, or Mentions today!