User-generated content (UGC) refers to content created by your customers about your brand or its products. It’s so simple that you’ve probably created UGC without even knowing it by leaving a review of a business or posting an image using a branded hashtag.
The beauty of UGC is that, while simple for customers to create and inexpensive for brands to amplify, it is one of the most effective ways to convince new audiences that your business is reputable and worth trying out.
In this article, you’ll learn what user-generated content is and how to apply it strategically to build trust, increase engagement, and ultimately, drive more conversions. Specifically, we’ll cover:
- What user-generated content is
- Types of UGC
- The benefits of using UGC in your campaigns
- Examples of how big and small brands execute UGC
- UGC best practices for ethical and impactful results
Key Takeaways
- User-generated content includes customer-created images, videos, reviews, testimonials, podcasts, etc., about your brand or product. UGC can be organic or paid.
- UGC can help brands influence engagement and conversions across all stages of the buyer’s journey by showcasing authenticity and social proof while building brand loyalty.
- UGC is a cornerstone of many marketing strategies because it’s cost-efficient and helps brands curate a steady stream of content. Ensure that UGC aligns with your overall social media and marketing strategy before reposting.
What is user-generated content (UGC)?
UGC (also known as consumer-generated content) is original, brand-specific content created by users and published on social media or other channels. This content can appear on your own channels (e.g., your social accounts, website), third-party websites (e.g., review sites, YouTube), and on social media and websites owned by your users.
UGC comes in many forms, including images, videos, product reviews, testimonials, or even podcasts.
Here’s an example of UGC created by a customer and then reshared on planner brand Day Designer’s Instagram:
Source: thedaydesigner on Instagram
Types of user-generated content
User-generated content is an important part of many marketing strategies, and it comes in many styles and formats that help your brand and your customers at various points in their journey.
There are two main overarching types of UGC: organic and paid. The most common forms of UGC include:
- Reviews and testimonials
- Photos
- Videos
- Social media posts
- Blog posts
Let’s take a closer look at these types of UGC in an organic sense before touching on the paid side.
Organic UGC
Organic UGC is content that your real-life customers share freely. It’s the most authentic type of UGC and what you hope to see from your customers.
Reviews and testimonials
Online reviews are a type of UGC that you can share across your website and social media as social proof. Brands can even turn testimonials into little graphics to share on their social media accounts.
Source: Hootsuite
Photos
Photos are one of the most common types of UGC. This typically looks like an image of a customer using your product or sharing their results from your product. Use a niche or branded hashtag to make it easy to find and reshare these assets on your own platforms.
Videos
Social media and YouTube videos are also great forms of UGC. In fact, many YouTubers share “product hauls” of items they bought recently, featuring several brands in a single video. Share that video—or the snippet mentioning your brand—to showcase what real customers have to say about your product.
Social media posts
Even a simple positive mention of your brand can be valuable to reshare. Repost these comments if you’re on X (Twitter), or take a screenshot and share it as a graphic on a platform like Instagram.
Blog posts
Bloggers may also mention your brand or product in one of their blog posts. This could be a standalone review or a swift mention in a broader post. Consider sharing their quote on social media or your website to spread the word.
Paid UGC
Paid UGC is becoming increasingly popular, especially for newer brands that want to share this type of user-driven content but don’t have enough customers sharing their experiences yet.
Paid UGC is made by UGC creators. This is different from influencers and is typically just as sincere as regular UGC — you’re just footing the bill.
You can reach out to UGC creators on your own (using a platform like Fiverr or Upwork), but if your brand already has fans, creators may come straight to you.
Either way, once you sort out a deal, you can take the content they create and share it on your website or social media accounts.
Note: It’s best to disclose paid UGC. Some platforms, like Instagram, mandate that you clearly indicate the commercial nature of any content you post.
Why user-generated content is important
User-generated content is an important marketing tool because it helps brands:
- Showcase authenticity
- Foster brand loyalty
- Provide social proof
- Curate content
- Maximize budget
Let’s take a closer look at how each of these elements make UGC a ubiquitous, yet effective and timeless tactic.
Authenticity
Nowadays, brands have to fight to get in front of customers, and online competition is fierce. Buyers are more selective about the brands they interact with and purchase from.
However, no other content type is more authentic than UGC. Almost half (47%) of shoppers consider user reviews on retailer websites to be the most influential content when researching products online — compare that to just 11% for brand-generated social content and 10% for influencer posts.
Just don’t resort to faking your user-generated posts. Audiences will quickly sniff out the false sentiment, which could damage your brand reputation. Instead, always ensure that your UGC comes from one of three cohorts: your customers, brand loyalists, or employees.
Think of UGC as the modern-day word of mouth — most people trust recommendations over straight advertising.
Brand loyalty
People thrive on being part of something bigger than themselves, and creating UGC allows them to join a brand’s community. That’s huge for boosting brand loyalty and affinity.
UGC also opens up conversations between your brand and its customers, and this level of brand interaction helps build and grow an engaged community.
Source: Lego
Sharing audience content also works to develop and deepen audience/business relationships, driving more brand loyalty.
Social proof
With so much competition and noise online, it’s harder than ever for customers to know who to trust. That’s why social proof can make or break your brand for new customers.
UGC is the perfect example of this. In fact, the purchase likelihood for products with five reviews is 270% greater than those with no reviews. When potential customers see existing customers enjoying your product, they’re less reluctant to try it for themselves.
Content curation
UGC isn’t just limited to social media marketing — you can and should feature it on other channels.
For example, try adding UGC images to a cart abandonment email to help nudge the prospective buyer to purchase. You might also add user-generated content to key landing pages to help increase conversion rates.
Calvin Klein even created a landing page just for UGC content.
By showing real examples of customers styling their Calvins, shoppers see other consumers endorsing the brand and showcasing how the products look on actual humans instead of overly styled models.
Cost-efficiency
Influencer marketing can run from $25 to $25,000 per post. But the average cost of asking your customers to share posts of them enjoying your product? Next to nothing.
UGC is a cost-effective way to scale your business and diversify your content. Plus, there’s no need to invest dollars in expensive ad agencies or flashy campaigns.
UGC allows you to connect with the most important people in your business: your audience. Most will be excited to appear on your channel.
For smaller brands or those just starting out, UGC is often far cheaper and easier to manage than larger-scale brand awareness campaigns.
5 great examples of user-generated content
Brands of all sizes use user-generated content to drive awareness, increase conversions and social engagement, expand their reach, and grow their business without needing to grow their budgets.
To help you get started with your own UGC strategy, let’s see how GoPro, lululemon, LaCroix, Well Traveled, and Edloe Finch leveraged their customer-sourced content.
GoPro
Action cam company GoPro uses UGC to sustain its YouTube channel, with its top three videos all originally filmed by customers. As of September 2025, those three videos have racked up over 420 million combined views.
Not bad for content that cost GoPro nothing to produce.
In fact, UGC for the company got so big, it now runs its own awards show and daily photo challenges to inspire consumers to get creative.
lululemon
Canadian athleisure brand lululemon is primarily known for its expensive leggings and yoga clothing. To increase company reach across social media, it asked followers and brand loyalists to share photos of themselves in lululemon garments using the hashtag #thesweatlife.
Not only did this result in a treasure-trove of easily searchable UGC for lululemon to repurpose, but it also organically expanded the company’s brand awareness and reach across social media as it shared content from brand ambassadors.
LaCroix
Similar to lululemon, sparkling water brand LaCroix also uses a hashtag (#LiveLaCroix) to mine for UGC on its social media channels. But, LaCroix relies less on brand loyalists and shares content produced by anyone, no matter their follower count.
This makes its user-generated content hyper-relatable because audiences see themselves reflected in these photos (rather than brand ambassadors or loyalists with higher follower counts).
Well Traveled
Smaller companies also greatly benefit from UGC in their social campaigns. Well Traveled is a community-driven travel brand that uses member-generated content to highlight the perks of its platform, the quality of property partners, and other exclusive offerings.
“As a service in such a visual industry, the ‘proof’ provided by member content is immeasurable,” said Well Traveled’s Director of Partnerships & Brand Marketing, Laura DeGomez. “The beautiful trips discovered, planned, and booked on Well Traveled are a phenomenal marketing and retention tool.”
DeGomez uses UGC to visually engage existing and prospective members, and increase brand awareness, expand reach, and strengthen community.
“No one tells our story better than our members,” she added, “The Well Traveled community is the key here. Whenever we can let their experiences shine, we do.”
Edloe Finch
Boutique furniture brand Edloe Finch collects UGC via hashtag (#EdloeFinch), but it also allows people to submit photos to its website. The brand then showcases these customer photos right on product pages.
By placing customer content on its product pages, shoppers can see what Edloe Finch’s products look like in other customers’ homes. Purchasing furniture online can be nerve-wracking, but these photos serve as a great form of social proof.
Source: Edloe Finch
4 best practices for user-generated content
User-generated content can be a free and easy way to market your brand or products, but there are still guidelines to follow to ensure that your brand stays ethical and respects both customers and creators.
Keep these best practices in mind as you implement UGC into your overall content plan:
- Always request permission
- Credit the original creator
- Specify the type of UGC you’re looking for
- Align your UGC with social strategy and marketing goals
Always request permission
Consent to share content is mandatory. Always ask before republishing or using a customer’s content.
People may use your branded hashtags without necessarily knowing you’ve tied them to a user-generated content campaign. Unfortunately, re-sharing that content without explicit permission is a surefire way to kill goodwill and annoy some of your best brand advocates.
When you ask permission, you show the original poster that you appreciate their content and get them excited about sharing their post with your audience. You also keep yourself out of hot water regarding copyright concerns.
Credit the original creator
When you share user-generated content on your social media channels, give clear credit to the original creator. This includes tagging them directly in the post and indicating whether you’re using their visuals, words, or both.
If you plan to share user-generated content across social media platforms, check for how the creator wants to be credited on the various channels. For example, if you want to share a photo from Instagram on your Facebook page, ask the original creator if they have a Facebook page you could tag.
Providing proper credit is an important way to recognize content creators. It helps ensure they stay excited about using and posting about your brand.
It also makes it easy for fans and followers to verify that the content was created by someone outside your company (i.e., social proof).
Specify the type of UGC you’re looking for
UGC creators want you to share their content. That means they want you to tell them what kind of content you’re most likely to share.
Don’t be afraid to get specific and make it easy for people to share content that fits your needs.
For example, soap brand Dove’s “Project #ShowUs” campaign asked for images from women and non-binary individuals “as they are, not as others believe they should be.”
Source: Getty
Align your UGC with social strategy and marketing goals
How will you know what type of UGC to ask for if you don’t know how it fits in with your campaign strategy? Sure, it’s nice when people tag you in pretty pictures, but how can you use that content to support your marketing goals?
First, sit down with your social media strategy document and look for ways UGC aligns with your existing marketing goals. Then, create a simple statement based on that information that tells users specifically what kind of content you’re most likely to feature.
Once you have a clear UGC ask, share it anywhere people are likely to interact with your brand:
- Your bios in social channels
- Other user-generated posts
- Your website
- Your physical location
- Your product packaging
UGC strategy goes beyond understanding the types of content you need from your customers. You also need to align your UGC campaign with broader social media goals.
For example, are you looking to increase brand awareness or drive more conversions (or both)?
Measure the success of your campaigns using a tool like Hootsuite Analytics or a social listening tool such as Hootsuite Listening to understand how the content your customers are creating impacts brand sentiment and trust.
FAQs on user-generated content
How is UGC different from influencer marketing?
While both leverage social proof, UGC refers to any content (organic or paid) created by customers about a brand or its products. The primary goals of UGC are to show authenticity and build trust/community. Influencer marketing is when a business collaborates with an influencer to create content that fits their brand. One of the primary goals of influencer marketing is to drive awareness by getting in front of the influencer’s audience.
What are some examples of user-generated content?
Classic examples of user-generated content include product or business reviews, photos, testimonials, social media posts, podcast episodes, videos, blog posts, etc. UGC can appear on social media platforms, review websites, personal blogs, and on the brand’s official channels (website, Instagram, Facebook, etc).
How do I get user-generated content?
You can use a branded hashtag to curate UGC or use social listening tools, like Hootsuite, to monitor social mentions. Once you identify appropriate UGC to repost, obtain permission from the original creator and be sure to cite them when you share it.
Is UGC expensive to implement?
UGC can be a free way to obtain content promoting your brand. In addition, you can also work with UGC creators for paid content that gives you more creative control over the final asset.
How do I use UGC effectively for my brand?
Ensure that you’re posting UGC with intention. Align your UGC with your existing social media and marketing goals. As you reshare UGC, make sure to track the success of your campaigns using tools like Hootsuite’s brand sentiment analyzer.
Ready to start displaying authentic user-generated content across your social channels? Use Hootsuite to publish and schedule posts, find relevant conversions, engage the audience, measure results, and more. Try it free today.
With files from Chloe West.
