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You see user-generated content (UGC) on TikTok every day.
And now, you’re asking, “How can I exploit UGC on TikTok for my business?”
You need a good UGC strategy and some work.
In this guide, I’ll show you what you need to know about UGC on TikTok, how to execute it, and examples to inspire you.
Let’s dive in.
Why you should use UGC on TikTok
Why go through the stress of collecting user-generated content from your TikTok audience?
Here are some good reasons:
Content creation
Unless you have an unlimited marketing budget, it’s almost impossible to keep up with the amount of content creation needed to engage your TikTok audience. Remember you also have to create content on other social media platforms.
Encouraging your audience to create UGC means you have a bucketful of content. And you can pick the best and repost on your TikTok profile.
Social proof
Whether we’re conscious of it or not, other people have a huge influence on what we buy.
So, when your customers create UGC about your product, it’s a subtle message to their friends that your product is good and should be bought.
Brand awareness
While businesses often call for UGC on TikTok to repost on their profile, the benefit of UGC goes beyond that.
Imagine 80 customers creating UGC about your products. These customers can reach thousands of people that your account can’t reach.
With UGC, more people will hear about your business and even check your products.
Lead generation
If you publish an excellent TikTok UGC that your audience loves, TikTok allows you to push its performance further with Spark Ads.
You can add a CTA button to the content to collect your audience’s information. Collecting this information lets you contact prospects in the future about your products.
Sales generation
Many people will see UGC about your product and proceed to shop and buy it.
Beyond that, you can also use Spark Ads to lead people to your product pages.
Customer service
A lot of user-generated content on TikTok shows people how to perform specific tasks with your product.
First, this can help customers who got stuck so they don’t need to contact your customer support reps. Second, these videos can help customers find more uses for your product and thereby get more satisfaction from using it.
Now that you’ve seen the benefits of using UGC on your TikTok account, let’s see how to execute UGC to obtain those benefits.
Types of UGC strategies on TikTok
Here are 2 types of UGC strategies you can use for your brand:
Organic TikTok UGC
Organic TikTok UGC includes videos from your customers. The benefit here is that you won’t pay the UGC creator.
However, the disadvantage is that you have little influence on the quality and direction of the content.
Paid TikTok UGC
On TikTok, UGC creators collaborate with brands to create product videos about the brand’s specifications. Of course, you have to pay the UGC creator based on their expertise, popularity, and content type.
The advantage of this strategy is that you can heavily influence the quality and direction of the content.
How to execute effective UGC on TikTok
1. Set a goal for your UGC campaign
User-generated content has an element of fun.
But if you use it for your business, you want UGC to pull its weight in terms of promoting your product.
This means you have to specify the results you want from your UGC campaigns. Setting a goal helps to shape your UGC strategy.
When setting a goal, ensure you set a SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goal. A SMART goal will ease how you measure your results.
Some common goals you can set for your UGC campaign on TikTok include:
- Brand awareness (Number of views, number of posts using a hashtag, number of posts using sound, etc.)
- Engagement (Number of likes on UGC posts, number of comments, etc.)
- Lead generation (Number of leads from ads)
- Sales generation (number of sales from content/ads)
- Web traffic (Amount of traffic to your product pages)
Once you set your goal, you can now brainstorm how to achieve it.
2. Define UGC type for your campaign
TikTok users create different types of videos about products.
You can see videos about product use cases, how to execute tasks, and more. So, to get the best results, you have to specify the type of UGC you want your customers to create.
Of course, your goal will also determine the best UGC type for your campaign. For example, if you want to show people how to use your products, you can ask customers to create tutorials.
Some common UGC types you can use include:
- Tutorial: For this type, customers will show how they perform specific tasks with your product. You can specify the task you want a tutorial to address or just give creators the freedom to create their favorite tutorials.
- Product use case: This UGC shows different ways customers use your product. For example, people can use a camera to capture special moments with family, create social media videos, or work as a photographer.
- Testimonial/review: In this UGC type, a customer will explain the problems a product solves for them and what potential buyers need to know about the product.
- Challenge: This UGC challenge can work for any brand. All you have to do is specify a task and ask your customers to show how well they can perform the task with your product.
- Duet: A duet is perfect for reactions or recreating a task. This UGC type can deliver a lot of fun content.
For example, here’s a testimonial by one of JVN hair’s customers:
Once you define the UGC type you want, you have to set up a system to collect the content.
3. Create a system to collect UGC on TikTok
While some customers will be wowed by your products enough to create videos voluntarily, many customers need a little push.
And that push usually involves a reward for creating UGC about your product. This reward can be as small as featuring on your account or as big as winning a gift.
When you decide on this reward, you also have to determine how to collect and organize your UGC.
Consider these effective ways:
- Hashtags: With hashtags, it’s easy to collect user-generated content. And they also have many uses. For example, hashtags can work for most of the UGC types. You can specify hashtags in your TikTok bio or for any campaign.
- Account tags: When users tag your brand account in a TikTok post, you’ll get a notification. From your notifications, you can see UGC from customers.
- Giveaways/contests: running giveaways is an effective method to collect UGC because you’ll give customers a good reason to create content. All you need to do is include UGC creation as one of your giveaway requirements.
- Reply to a post: Since TikTok allows users to reply to posts with videos, it’s a good way to collect UGC. This works well for UGC types like challenges and duets.
- Use an original sound: Apart from hashtags, TikTok also uses original sounds to organize posts. So, if you click the sound in a TikTok post, you’ll see the posts with that sound. For this, include a sound in your post and tell customers to use it in their post.
Take for example, GoPro’s TikTok giveaway. The giveaway requirement was for GoPro’s customers to submit their best bloopers. But to collect and organize submissions, GoPro told participants to use a sound in their posts.
Having a good system helps you collect UGC effectively for your brand. And when you collect most of your UGC, you can go through the videos to get the best content.
4. Jump on trends
Trends occur every week. And these trends can be an opportunity to collect UGC from your customers.
The main advantage of jumping on trends is that you’re creating content about a topic that’s already popular. So, you can key into this popularity to drive some awareness for your product.
That said, not every trend will work for your business.
You have to review a trend to see how you can connect it with your products. If you visit TikTok regularly, you’ll see these trends on your timeline.
But beyond that, a tool like Later mobile app also shows you trends to exploit on TikTok.
After finding the right trend, you can call on customers to create content about a trend featuring your product.
Trends can be a way to obtain fun content about your products.
5. Find and engage UGC creators
Apart from customers who love your products and create content about it, some TikTok users create UGC as a job.
TikTok UGC creators collaborate with brands to create user-generated content about their products. As I mentioned earlier, UGC creators will charge you an amount to create these videos.
Why do you sometimes need UGC creators?
If you’re a new brand with a few customers, it’s difficult to find customers to create organic UGC about your products. Because of this, UGC creators can be a great way to spread the word initially.
In another sense, hiring UGC creators can give you a chance to get ideal creators who already create content that fits your brand voice. So this gives you control over the messaging you put out about your product.
To find UGC creators, follow two common steps. One is to search TikTok for your niche or industry keyword.
For example, you can search “ugc fashion” or “ugc creator fashion” if you create products in the fashion niche.
Here are the results when I searched “UGC creator health and wellness” and clicked on “users:”
You can also filter your results based on the number of followers and types of profiles. Click on the filter icon at the top right corner of the search results page to do that.
Another way is to use tools to find UGC creators. Tools like Insense and Grin can help you find creators according to your criteria.
Once you find a creator, here are a few things to do to collaborate with them:
- Go through their TikTok profile: The main aim here is to view their content to see its quality and tone. You also want to check engagement levels on their posts. I’d say you should only shortlist UGC creators who already create the type of content you want. This way, they can deliver good content even without a detailed brief.
- Reach out to them about collaboration: Once you’re satisfied with a creator’s content, you can reach out to them about creating content for your brand. During this discussion, you can talk about payment and the result you want.
- Provide a creative brief for content: With a creative brief, you can provide details about the type of UGC you want them to create, brand voice, length of content, and other important details. Ensure that your creative brief is loose enough to allow creative freedom from the creator.
- Publish content: When the creator delivers content, you can now publish it on your profile. Some UGC from creators only live on the brand’s TikTok profile, while some appear on both the brand’s and creator’s profiles.
- Measure results: After publishing user-generated content, you can measure results according to your goals for the content.
Forrest Jones regularly reviews vehicles. Because of this, brands send vehicles to him for reviews.
By finding and engaging UGC creators, you can have more control on the type of UGC that promotes your products.
6. Reach out to UGC creator before sharing content
If you work with a paid UGC creator, permission to publish the content comes with the deal.
But if you want to repost an organic UGC on your profile, you have to get permission. After all, you don’t want to get into hot water for copyright problems.
When you reach out to a customer about reposting their UGC, they can give you the rights to use the content on your TikTok profile and other marketing platforms.
Of course, most customers will happily grant the permission, but you want to cover all bases.
To collect permission, you can publish a comment under the content or send a DM to the TikTok user. When sending the message, state all the possible ways you can use the content.
After this, you can share the content.
7. Share content with credit
Even if you get permission from a customer, it’s important to credit them for the content. Otherwise, your followers may assume you created the content.
First, sharing UGC without credit robs the creator of their sweat. Second, it robs your post of the social proof you want to exploit.
And tagging the content creator goes for both organic and paid UGC creators.
When sharing UGC, it’s important to follow all the rules of writing social media captions. For example, apart from tagging the creator, you can say a few things about how the creator uses your product.
Then, you can add the relevant brand and industry hashtags to expand your post reach.
Here’s a UGC on Photoshop’s TikTok account:
Once you share UGC on your page, you’re almost done with your UGC campaign. If you want to push the post further, you can do that with Spark Ads.
8. Review UGC campaign results
Whether you’re using organic or paid UGC, you want some marketing results from it. The results will be metrics you’ve defined according to your goals.
Reviewing your results can show whether your UGC campaign has succeeded or not. You can also get insights into what to improve in your UGC strategy.
How do you get these campaign metrics?
It depends on the metrics you want to track and the platform you’ve used during the UGC campaign.
For instance, if you use UGC for brand awareness and want to achieve a particular number of views and likes, you can easily see this on TikTok analytics.
If you use a social media management tool to publish content, you can also check it for analytics.
However, if you boost UGC content with Spark Ads and add a CTA button to the landing page, you can get metrics from TikTok and your landing page tool.
If you use Spark Ads to drive traffic to a web page, you can use TikTok and Google Analytics to track all the important metrics.
So, your campaign goals will determine the metrics to track and the tools to use.
Review your UGC campaign results to ensure that your campaigns contribute positively to your product marketing on TikTok.
TikTok UGC examples
GoPro
GoPro is a camera company that features a lot of user-generated content on its TikTok profile.
You’ll see videos of adventures from its customers. These videos can be from sports people, wildlife photographers, or travelers.
These videos show prospects common use cases of the cameras.
GoPro gets a lot of quality UGC from its customers through giveaways and various GoPro Awards.
Photoshop
Photoshop is a graphics editing software. And it’s so popular that you’ve probably seen a design done with Photoshop.
What better way to show the editor’s capability than by publishing what customers achieve with it?
So, you’ll see UGC that shows results from users, tutorials, and use cases.
By going through Photoshop’s TikTok profile, a potential user will see the results they can achieve with the software.
BMW
BMW is a German luxury car brand. The brand features content from customers on its TikTok profile.
BMW provides a hashtag (#BMWRepost) that customers can use in their UGC to be featured on BMW’s TikTok account.
But another thing I see here is that BMW publishes user-generated content from Instagram. This is killing 2 birds with 1 stone.
You can also publish Instagram UGC on TikTok and indicate in your captions that it’s from IG.
Chubbies
Chubbies is an apparel brand that sells shorts.
On its TikTok account, you’ll see content from creators wearing Chubbies shorts.
These videos show various use cases of the shorts, like wearing them to the golf course, on vacation, or to a party.
The UGC on Chubbies’ TikTok account gives potential buyers ideas on how to use the product.
Spikeball
Spikeball is an outdoor game you can play with friends and family.
For a game like this, one way to attract even more players is to show the amount of fun players get from it.
Spikeball features videos of users playing the game and having fun.
By featuring the UGC on its TikTok profile, Spikeball will encourage other users to create UGC for the game.
Conclusion
If you’re not using user-generated content on TikTok, you’re leaving a lot of compelling content on the table.
That’s because UGC comes with more trust than your brand content. And UGC can reach even users you can’t reach in a year.
What’s the next step to take?
Use this guide to create your UGC strategy on TikTok and begin to harvest compelling content from customers who love your product.
