Milo Linney
Campaign Executive
UGC: User Generated Content. What is it? #BullaLessons
Let’s start with a textbook definition of UGC; it is original, brand-specific content created by customers and published on social media. In short, UGC is what most of our students produce for us for campaigns with the brands we work with.
Where does UGC content come from?
Customers
This could be the students who work with our brands, the ones who are interested in the products, or those selling them. For example, think of a TikTok unboxing video or an Instagram reel from someone with your products – this is customer user-generated content.
Employees
Employee user-generated content includes materials and social media posts which are created by employees related to your brand or industry. Take the example of when we dressed as a Brit Abroad as an example of an employee UGC. This shows the value and story behind your brand and helps establish brand identity.
Now let’s have a look at UGC from a brand perspective.
Benefits of using UGC content
- Boost social media reach and growth
Creating UGC is a great strategy to build customer relationships and increase brand awareness. This increases social traffic, which consequently results in a higher follower base, extended reach and boosted social metrics such as likes, shares, comments and retweets. - Shows authenticity of your brand
This portrays to potential audiences that your brand is not robotic, and has real-life behind it enabling you to grow. The power of an online community can strengthen your brand image with strong customer relationships. In other words, the power of a face behind a video can increase awareness and grow your audience. - UGC can help your SEO
If users are publishing content to their own social channels, this will also improve your SEO ranking. Furthermore, using analytics to analyse the most frequently used words your audience uses can also help improve your keyword optimisation research. - Gain audience insights
Using analytics to analyse your audience’s content can generate key insights as it helps you understand your audience and what they find engaging. This can therefore help generate leads and increase sales/sign ups/downloads etc.
With the rise of platforms such as TikTok, user-generated content is on the rise. If you’re aiming to reach the student market through optimal student content creators and UGC, please email hello@bullaco.com 
Additionally, are you a student who wants to create UGC for your favourite brands? Sign up to Bulla Co today 