How To Legally Use User-Generated Content: A Marketers’ Guide

87% of brands use UGC for authentic (and free) content. That’s because, over the years, user-generated content has become a sustainable marketing strategy. 

It holds the capacity to single-handedly influence consumers’ lifestyle decisions, boosting marketing outcomes for brands at the max. 

Feeling overwhelmed? Well, it’s just the tip of the iceberg. When you break down UGC marketing, many things are involved. Not to mention how brands often skip an essential element- UGC Rights Management.

UGC Rights Management enables brands to legally repurpose user-generated content in their marketing strategies to avoid legal consequences.

Best Practices To Legally Incorporate User-Generated Content

You must be wondering how one goes about with the legal incorporation of user-generated content that enables brands to repurpose UGC more confidently. Here is how we simplify it for you.

1. Ask Directly On Social Media

Social media has allowed brands to interact directly with their target audience and customers, without the intervention of a mediator. Now customers can send direct messages to brands for any queries, and brands can do the same to connect with the spectators. Why not use this social media boon to acquire UGC rights? It can be the most simplified way. 

All you need is to identify the relevant posts of your customers. You can comment on the posts or send a direct message to the customers asking permission to repurpose their content. It encourages interactional activities between brands and customers and brings them closer by bridging the communication gap.

2. Give Credits To Content Owner

It is crucial to give customers their due credits as they consent to repurpose their content on your various marketing channels. You can mention the user or tag them on the post. You can add the users’ handle right below the post to ensure that you are rightfully crediting the user.

It will not only encourage the user to create more UGC for you, but it will also authorize your marketing campaigns as authentic, building trust among the spectators. Not only that but it will also instill social proof among your customers and encourage more people to create UGC for you.

3. Be More Transparent With What You Seek

When seeking UGC rights, you need to be upfront with your customer about why you want to repurpose their content, where you will leverage the content, and how you will showcase it across different marketing channels. It adds more transparency to the content-seeking process, making users voluntarily grant UGC rights.

The best way to make it happen is by offering a terms & conditions page that comes with a UGC rights policy section that showcases how you responsibly manage users’ content.

4. Implicit v/s Explicit Consent

When it comes to acquiring the UGC rights, keep in mind how you will repurpose the content and how well the customers know about it. That depicts what kind of consent acquiring you follow among the two types- explicit & implicit. 

In cases like hashtag campaigns, users directly give their permission to use their content as they willingly participate in the hashtag campaign, allowing brands to use the content to increase their social media presence. This phenomenon becomes implicit consent. But when you want to take UGC beyond social media and use it across other marketing touchpoints, you have to acquire explicit consent from the users to use UGC legally.

5. Choose A UGC Rights Management Platform

Choosing a UGC rights management software should be the most important thing to enter the world of UGC marketing. That’s because it makes things seamless for you to acquire quick content rights from multiple customers. 

Many UGC rights management platforms like Taggbox help brands gain complete UGC rights legally with users’ consent, timestamp, region, IP address, and more to ensure that you have acquired the creator’s full consent. The goal is for brands to confidently repurpose UGC in their marketing strategies to avoid legal hassles.

Why Acquire UGC Rights?

It’s not just about “you gotta do, what you gotta do,” acquiring UGC rights for marketing has more significance to it. Here is our take on why obtaining UGC rights has to be step one for brands.

1. Maintain Brand-Customer Relationships

Maintaining the brand and customer relationship becomes an essential ingredient in any brand growth path. If user-generated content helps brands to create a strong bond with customers, acquiring UGC rights authenticates this bond and builds brand trust among users. 

When you take your customers’ permission before using their content, it instills reliability for your brand, making them your loyal customers- always ready to create more UGC for you.

2. Protects User Rights

Protecting user rights is the most ethical practice for brands to acquire users’ trust. As per the social media law, every brand and marketer must attain users’ rights while leveraging their content into any branded activity. 

When you take time to seek users’ permission and repurpose their content once they give their permission, rather than forcing your marketing methods on them without their will, it enhances your brand image.

3. Avoid Legal Consequences

While social media has an abundance of free content, its usage is not unrestrained. Many brands face legal trouble when they don’t rightfully acquire consent from users, as people have the right to file a lawsuit against anyone who uses their social media content without their permission. 

Getting UGC rights permission is crucial to saving your brand from legal consequences or, in simple terms, getting sued by the content creator.

Taggbox: The Absolute UGC Rights Management Software

Taggbox offers flawless UGC rights management software to brands to gain legal rights on user-generated content created by experienced brand users. All you need is to follow an easy 3 step process by quickly sending UGC rights requests to the content owner, gaining approval, and leveraging it into multiple UGC marketing campaigns.

Here are some key highlights offered by Taggbox UGC Rights Management Software:

• Rightful UGC curation to fetch UGC and gain creators’ consent all within one platform
• Simplified UGC management and bulk requesting to take permission from multiple users 
• A legal log to nurture all the user-generated content from one dashboard
• Personalized brand-user communication to build trust, offer valuable user experience, maintain brand reputation and brand-user relationships

Why UGC Has Become Brands & Marketers’ Top Pick?

If social media is the gold mine for marketers, user-generated content has become the new gold. User-generated content comes from real people sharing their authentic experiences with a brand. 90% of consumers believe that user-generated content has helped them make better decisions while investing in a brand or a product online. 

Brands treasure user-generated content as it saves their time and capital in content creation and helps them to offer a diverse range of vibrant content to their audiences. Gone are the days when businesses would go outbound while promoting their brand. It’s time to turn consumers into brand advocates to create stand-out and awe-inspiring marketing campaigns.

Well, it all seems compelling in theory, but when you have to get into UGC marketing, taking content rights from the creator is the soundest thing to do. It saves you from a lot of legal trouble. Besides, your goal is to create a better relationship with your customers, and what’s a more appropriate way than taking their permission before using their content?