By Julia Wallace | November 8, 2022

User-generated content is a win-win for brands on social media. It demonstrates brand recognition and enthusiasm; it adds a healthy dose of realness to your feed; it gives a platform to the person who was kind enough to post about your company; and (perhaps best of all!) it’s one less piece of content you have to produce for yourself.

So actually, UGC is a win-win-win-win!

But that doesn’t mean you should snatch it up greedily like a little social media goblin. There are rules and best practices to abide by!

Here are our recommendations for requesting and reposting UGC:

1. Please just ask permission

If you are going to take someone else’s photo and put it on your feed, just ask them first. Even if this person tags you, that does not automatically mean they want their face or photo in front of a wider audience. They may have just wanted you to see it and leave a nice comment.

Asking permission to repost doesn’t have to be formal or arduous or time-consuming. Something like this will do the trick:

“Wow, we love this photo so much! 😍 We would love to repost it to our feed and other social media platforms. Do we have your permission to do that?”

This also shows that you care about the creator’s preferences and autonomy.

2. When you repost, be sure to tag the creator

Share the love! If you’re resharing the photo on the same platform they posted it on, thank them in the caption and throw in their username. If you’re reposting to a different platform, use their full name (if it’s listed; if not, username is fine) and mention the platform it was posted on.

For example:

“Thank you to @amr_digital for sharing this awesome photo with us!” or “Shout out to AMR Digital Marketing for sharing this photo with us on Instagram!”

3. Occasions where you don’t need to ask for permission to repost

I like to think of it like this: if it’s akin to a retweet, you don’t need to ask permission from the creator.

Would you ask someone on Twitter if you have their permission to retweet something they said? No! You get to just go for it, because that’s how Twitter works.

I would say it’s the same for sharing UGC to your company’s Instagram story, sharing a post from a creator directly on LinkedIn, or dueting a video on TikTok.

If it is easily linked back to the original post, then it’s a “retweet.” If you’re taking the photo and posting it to your page as if it were yours, then you should ask permission first.
Have more questions about the do’s and don’ts of UGC? Such as, can you use UGC in a paid advertising campaign? Click here!