User-generated content, or UGC, refers to photos, videos, reviews, and other posts created by customers, fans, or creators rather than by brands themselves.
Within that category, marketers increasingly distinguish between paid UGC, where creators are commissioned to produce content for campaigns, and organic UGC, which originates as native posts shared by customers or creators in their normal social activity. Because the latter appear naturally in feeds and reflect genuine experiences, they often generate stronger engagement signals and social proof than polished brand advertising.
As a result, many brands are exploring organic UGC as both a discovery channel and a creative testing ground. High-performing posts can later be amplified through paid formats such as partnership or creator-handle ads, allowing teams to scale messages that have already proven to resonate with audiences. But identifying those posts, securing permissions, organizing assets, and activating them across marketing channels requires new operational workflows.
To better understand how companies are addressing that challenge, we asked 22 Creator Economy professionals what tools and processes they use to find, capture, rights-manage, and activate organic UGC at scale and how brands can turn everyday customer content into a reliable source of creative and performance insights.
The old playbook of getting customers to post with the product and branded hashtag for a chance to be featured on your page made sense when audiences were less cynical. Overall trust is at an all-time low, that social currency doesn’t carry as much weight anymore, and brands still relying on this workflow have a heavy operational tax: manually filtering hashtags, saving compressed files one by one, no rights management pipeline, and nothing talking to anything else. Video and photo UGC, and a text review are not the same asset. Brands repurposing verified customer media in retargeting see much better CTR (Click-Through Rate) and lower CPC (Cost Per Click) than standard creatives. But capturing it efficiently requires an integrated workflow: automated follow-ups incentivizing customers to add media, usage rights cleared automatically via legal pages and submission forms, and everything feeding back into the marketing stack rather than sitting in another siloed review tool duct-taped to it..
Here is the ugly truth that nobody wants to admit to. It’s just as easy and oftentimes more effective to do Google/Perplexity/Gemini searches, along with free tools that have access to the various APIs, as it is to use $25k a year (per seat) software to find and manage UGC. We have multiple tools (and have changed them over time) because they are a mandatory from clients, but we also constantly bench test human searches and management with the tools, and I’m telling you that the results are better with the humans and a spreadsheet. The tools give you peace of mind, because someone else spent $10M+ developing the tool, so if your boss/client doesn’t like the answer, you can backup your results by showing the tool, whereas with your team can be questioned on the results (you can’t question the tool, it just “is”). So – my 2 cents, is be practical, don’t spend money “just because”, make sure to test your results; not every brand has the “extra” budget for $25k per tool (and usually has several). If you can show team expertise, apply those budgets to working media, extra creative and other things that actually make you, your team and your brand better.
Scaling UGC isn’t about one magic tool, it’s about building a system. Rights management is standardized right at the onboarding, as clear agreements around paid media usage and whitelisting save a lot of friction later. We typically combine our talent roster with creator discovery platforms like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing and social listening to find people already talking about the brand. From there, the key is structuring everything: we catalogue assets in shared libraries with metadata on hooks, formats, and performance so we can spot patterns over time. The real value comes when brands treat UGC as a creative testing engine. Instead of producing one polished ad, we test dozens of creator videos through paid media, identify what resonates, and scale the winners. The brands that get the most out of UGC aren’t just collecting content, they’re building a feedback loop between creators, organic performance, and paid media strategy.
Organic UGC is one of the most underutilized growth levers for brands. The biggest mistake I see is treating it as something you “hope” happens instead of building infrastructure to capture and activate it. At REACH, we approach it like a system. First, we monitor social listening signals across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to identify customers already posting about the product. Those creators are often the most authentic advocates. Second, we immediately move into structured outreach with clear usage permissions, licensing terms, and creator-friendly incentives so brands can legally repurpose the content across paid, organic, and owned channels. Finally, we scale distribution by pairing organic UGC with a network of micro creators and campus ambassadors who amplify what is already resonating. The brands that win treat UGC as a content supply chain, not a lucky accident. When you have a repeatable process for discovery, rights management, and amplification, organic content becomes a powerful engine for both creativity and performance.
To get the most out of organic UGC, brands need to treat discovery as a discipline. We rely on TikTok discovery, Instagram discovery, and manual on-platform keyword searches aligned to the behaviors and moments we want to capture. Human insight still matters and knowing what to search for and identifying creators already showing authentic brand affinity is where the real value lies. Outside of what platforms natively provide, automation remains limited. Most AI tools don’t offer true real-time monitoring, and building custom scraping solutions is expensive and time-consuming. That’s why smart workflows matter: consistent search cadences, clear tagging systems, and fast rights outreach processes. Finally, think beyond reposting. Secure rights early and activate winning content across paid social, CTV, retail media, and commerce. When structured properly, organic UGC becomes an always-on creative engine.
One of the biggest challenges with organic UGC is that kids and teens are often left out of the ecosystem entirely. For audiences under 13 especially, regulations like COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) mean many platforms limit the features that typically allow users to create, share, and interact with content. That means brands aren’t just missing content. They’re missing insight into how the next generation communicates, what they care about, and how they express themselves creatively. The opportunity is creating environments where kids and teens can participate safely and authentically. Platforms with strong moderation and clear guardrails make it possible for younger audiences to be creators and generate UGC within a compliant ecosystem. In moderated environments, brands can safely observe how kids and teens create, what themes resonate, and what language emerges organically. On Zigazoo, for example, moderated challenges help make that possible while maintaining appropriate oversight. The most valuable UGC isn’t just creative output. It’s a window into the culture of the next generation.
We regularly work with partners to do ongoing UGC audits, whereby we 1) Track all mentions of the brand/category, 2) Determine if we want to either acquire the rights to that specific content or connect with that person about doing a custom partnership around new content, and 3) Contract according to how the person/creator reacts to the request. This is a really effective way to turn fans into your creators, as they have proven existing brand or category love.
At scale, the most important part of UGC is rights management. We usually work with creators who sign an agreement before producing content. That agreement covers usage rights and buyout terms upfront. If a brand later wants to extend usage for ads, additional markets, or longer licensing, we simply add an extension to the agreement. Once the creator signs, we make the collaboration attractive so they’re motivated to produce strong content. That means a clear brief, simple process, and strong brand positioning. After the content is delivered, our editorial team reviews it, makes small adjustments if needed, and prepares it for publishing across the brand’s channels. My advice to brands is simple: secure the rights early, build a consistent creator pipeline system, and treat UGC like an ongoing content engine rather than random posts. The brands that win are producing new content every week.
Organic UGC only becomes valuable at scale when brands treat it as a system, not a lucky accident. Most teams still rely on manual discovery and one-off permissions, which makes it hard to operationalize. The best setups combine three layers. First, structured discovery through social listening and community signals to identify high-quality fan content early. Second, a clear rights workflow, where creators can grant usage permissions quickly and transparently so content can actually be activated. Third, a content operating model that rapidly turns the best UGC into ads, storefront assets, and community storytelling. The key tip is to reward participation. When fans see their content recognized, reposted, or even financially rewarded, contribution compounds. The brands that win with UGC do not just harvest it. They design ecosystems where fans want to create.
At The Digital Dept., we approach UGC through three distinct strategies. The first is organic product seeding, where we gift product to carefully selected creators and allow them to post at their discretion. The second is a paid, curated UGC program, where we partner with UGC-focused creators to produce high-quality content specifically for brand use across social, web, and paid media. The third is a consumer-facing UGC campaign, where influencers lead a call-to-action encouraging their audiences to post brand-related content. Each serves a different purpose, whether building a loyal creator community, to delivering reliable, high-quality assets at scale, to driving broader awareness and engagement. Our philosophy is quality over quantity. Rather than sending product to thousands of creators blindly, we prioritize thoughtful casting and relationship-building. Organic programs often become a valuable testing ground, helping us understand which creators, audiences, and creative approaches resonate most. These insights inform future paid campaigns and larger brand initiatives.
Organic UGC is one of the most underutilized growth levers for brands today. The key is not just collecting content from customers and fans, but building a structured process around discovery, rights management, and activation. At Clicks Talent, we see the most successful brands combine organic UGC with creator partnerships. Influencers and micro-creators often spark the first wave of authentic content, which then encourages real users to participate and share their own experiences. To scale this effectively, brands should focus on three things: clear rights management, efficient content sourcing through communities and creators, and strong repurposing strategies across paid ads, social media, and landing pages. The brands that win with UGC are those that treat it not as random content, but as a scalable creative engine powered by real people.
Turning customers into affiliates is a powerful way to generate UGC from your customer base. By giving customers a referral incentive, they will create content on social media with the goal of driving purchases. This content is often perfect for ad creatives or whitelisting since it is authentic and from real customers.
Organic UGC is often seen as a scalable content resource, but behind every post is a real person who chose to share their experience with a brand. As brands increasingly rely on community content to fuel their creative output, respecting that contribution becomes essential. The challenge today isn’t finding UGC, social media are full of it, but managing it responsibly and at scale. That requires clear internal processes to monitor conversations, identify valuable content, request permissions quickly, and organize assets so they can be reused across social media, paid campaigns, and other digital touchpoints.
Transparency is key. Explicit consent, clarity around how the content will be used, and proper credit whenever possible should always be part of the workflow. When approached thoughtfully, organic UGC becomes more than a content source, it becomes a powerful way to build authentic relationships between brands and their communities.
At Jukin, we’ve worked with authentic video creators since UGC first became “a thing”. We’ve grown our brand-safe content library steadily over the years and now, along with human-powered curation, we also use AI to find, onboard, and rights manage this content so that it’s ready and available for clients to license at the drop of a hat. Organic content is exactly that – real, relatable, moments that brands can use to optimize engagement with their audiences. While AI greatly helps us find and leverage this content, videos of true human experience and connectivity reign supreme.
We use Tagger by Sprout Social (and still do some good old-fashioned scrolling through our feeds) to discover standout creator content, then recommend managing campaigns and rights through a platform like CreatorIQ so assets can be cleared and activated at scale. Key tips for brands: proactively request usage rights, collaborate with creators on deliverables that can be easily repurposed, amplify top-performing UGC with paid media, and build long-term relationships so creators consistently produce on-brand assets you can reuse across channels. It’s also important to prioritize simple legal templates and a streamlined approval workflow to speed time to activation.
Organic UGC works best when brands treat it as a scalable content engine rather than a one-off repost opportunity. In our campaigns, we use a mix of social listening, hashtag monitoring and close relationships with creator communities to identify content that is already resonating with audiences. Once strong content is surfaced, securing usage rights and organizing it properly allows brands to extend its lifespan across organic channels, paid media and broader campaign rollouts. One of the biggest mistakes we see is brands overproducing UGC after acquiring it. The reason it performs well is because it feels native to the platform and relatable to the audience. The brands that see the strongest results are consistently sourcing content from real customers and creators who already enjoy the product, allowing them to scale creative while maintaining authenticity.
The controversial truth: most brands already have more usable content than they realize. At partnrup.ai, we automated the entire process because the bottleneck is not creators. It is operations. Our system searches social platforms to find relevant creators and real customers already talking about a product. It evaluates audience quality, context, and brand fit, then automatically sends personalized outreach explaining why the creator is a match. If they accept, the platform generates the agreement, handles rights permissions, and automates payment once content is delivered. Now imagine what happens if you recapture days of your work week. Instead of chasing contracts and invoices, teams can test more ads, repurpose creator videos across DTC or Amazon product pages or brand’s own socials – and actually use the content they already have rights to more consistently.
Brands are sitting on a huge volume of customer-created video. I use video intelligence tools like ViralMoment to surface that UGC and analyze the videos themselves, not just captions. That means detecting brand mentions in speech, on-screen text, logos, and comments across platforms, which quickly shows where a brand is appearing and why. Step one is visibility: surface the videos tied to the brand. Step two is context: understand why the brand is showing up there. Is it appearing in unexpected communities like MomTok? Are creators using the product in ways the team had not considered? Step three is organization: save standout videos and creators into collections so they are easy to revisit, assess for outreach, and manage for potential usage rights. Step four is activation: use those patterns to guide creator partnerships, new content, and broader strategy. That process turns organic video into a scalable creative and cultural advantage.
User-generated content only becomes truly powerful when brands can operate it at scale, and that’s where technology – especially AI – becomes essential. The promise of UGC isn’t a handful of posts; it’s hundreds or even thousands of pieces of content created by real users. But identifying creators, managing outreach, securing permissions, and organizing assets manually quickly becomes inefficient and expensive. If too many human hours are required, the model simply doesn’t deliver a strong ROI. This is why AI and automation are becoming the backbone of scalable UGC programs. AI agents can help identify potential creators, manage large-scale communication, automate licensing workflows, and organize content libraries so brands can activate assets efficiently. At Goldfish, for example, we developed GoldfishDNA, a proprietary platform that allows us to communicate with thousands of creators simultaneously and automate contracts and licensing. Without this kind of infrastructure, scaling UGC is extremely difficult. Otherwise, brands may find it more efficient to work with a smaller number of macro or mega influencers instead of trying to manage UGC manually.
On the practical side, we’ve built an exclusive Movers & Creators Network, a continuously growing Rolodex of UGC-specific creators across the US that we pull from daily for our clients. This gives our clients access to creators and content that already feels organic because it is organic. Organic search is always the starting point: being genuinely ingrained in culture means you naturally see who’s creating relevance, not just who has reach. The real power of UGC is its ability to feel like the opposite of an ad. The moment it feels produced, you’ve lost it.
My tip: stop waiting for UGC to come to you. Build the infrastructure to find it, capture it, and deploy it at scale
Sourcing UGC is a huge way to scale creative, but it only works if you have a workflow to find, capture, and activate it safely. I usually start by identifying where the most engaged fans live – social channels, reviews, or communities – and then collect content with clear permissions. From there, treat it like any other asset: optimize, tag, and run it through a quick compliance check before going live. Tools like Loopholes make this part seamless, letting you scan copy, images, videos, and audio for any potential policy risks before campaigns hit publish. The key is to start small, measure performance, and scale what resonates – that’s how UGC becomes a real growth engine without creating risk.
The most powerful content often comes from fans who genuinely love your brand. The key isn’t just finding it – it’s capturing it, getting rights, and putting it to work without losing its authenticity. Hashtags, mentions, and reviews are your treasure maps, and tools can help organize and scale it. But the magic happens when you celebrate your creators, make sharing easy, and treat UGC as a real partnership. Authentic voices resonate, multiply creative output, and perform better across social, ads, and email. Consistency, care, and smart repurposing turn this organic content into campaigns that feel human, real, and unforgettable.
Dragomir is a Serbian freelance blog writer and translator. He is passionate about covering insightful stories and exploring topics such as influencer marketing, the creator economy, technology, business, and cyber fraud.
User-generated content, or UGC, refers to photos, videos, reviews, and other posts created by customers, fans, or creators rather than by brands themselves.
Within that category, marketers increasingly distinguish between paid UGC, where creators are commissioned to produce content for campaigns, and organic UGC, which originates as native posts shared by customers or creators in their normal social activity. Because the latter appear naturally in feeds and reflect genuine experiences, they often generate stronger engagement signals and social proof than polished brand advertising.
As a result, many brands are exploring organic UGC as both a discovery channel and a creative testing ground. High-performing posts can later be amplified through paid formats such as partnership or creator-handle ads, allowing teams to scale messages that have already proven to resonate with audiences. But identifying those posts, securing permissions, organizing assets, and activating them across marketing channels requires new operational workflows.
To better understand how companies are addressing that challenge, we asked 22 Creator Economy professionals what tools and processes they use to find, capture, rights-manage, and activate organic UGC at scale and how brands can turn everyday customer content into a reliable source of creative and performance insights.
Daniel Caldas, Founder,Caldas Ecom
The old playbook of getting customers to post with the product and branded hashtag for a chance to be featured on your page made sense when audiences were less cynical. Overall trust is at an all-time low, that social currency doesn’t carry as much weight anymore, and brands still relying on this workflow have a heavy operational tax: manually filtering hashtags, saving compressed files one by one, no rights management pipeline, and nothing talking to anything else. Video and photo UGC, and a text review are not the same asset. Brands repurposing verified customer media in retargeting see much better CTR (Click-Through Rate) and lower CPC (Cost Per Click) than standard creatives. But capturing it efficiently requires an integrated workflow: automated follow-ups incentivizing customers to add media, usage rights cleared automatically via legal pages and submission forms, and everything feeding back into the marketing stack rather than sitting in another siloed review tool duct-taped to it..
Keith Pape, CEO,YellowPike Media
Here is the ugly truth that nobody wants to admit to. It’s just as easy and oftentimes more effective to do Google/Perplexity/Gemini searches, along with free tools that have access to the various APIs, as it is to use $25k a year (per seat) software to find and manage UGC. We have multiple tools (and have changed them over time) because they are a mandatory from clients, but we also constantly bench test human searches and management with the tools, and I’m telling you that the results are better with the humans and a spreadsheet. The tools give you peace of mind, because someone else spent $10M+ developing the tool, so if your boss/client doesn’t like the answer, you can backup your results by showing the tool, whereas with your team can be questioned on the results (you can’t question the tool, it just “is”). So – my 2 cents, is be practical, don’t spend money “just because”, make sure to test your results; not every brand has the “extra” budget for $25k per tool (and usually has several). If you can show team expertise, apply those budgets to working media, extra creative and other things that actually make you, your team and your brand better.
Julia Salume, Head of Influencers & UGC,Moburst
Scaling UGC isn’t about one magic tool, it’s about building a system. Rights management is standardized right at the onboarding, as clear agreements around paid media usage and whitelisting save a lot of friction later. We typically combine our talent roster with creator discovery platforms like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing and social listening to find people already talking about the brand. From there, the key is structuring everything: we catalogue assets in shared libraries with metadata on hooks, formats, and performance so we can spot patterns over time. The real value comes when brands treat UGC as a creative testing engine. Instead of producing one polished ad, we test dozens of creator videos through paid media, identify what resonates, and scale the winners. The brands that get the most out of UGC aren’t just collecting content, they’re building a feedback loop between creators, organic performance, and paid media strategy.
Dylan Huey, CEO,REACH
Organic UGC is one of the most underutilized growth levers for brands. The biggest mistake I see is treating it as something you “hope” happens instead of building infrastructure to capture and activate it. At REACH, we approach it like a system. First, we monitor social listening signals across TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube to identify customers already posting about the product. Those creators are often the most authentic advocates. Second, we immediately move into structured outreach with clear usage permissions, licensing terms, and creator-friendly incentives so brands can legally repurpose the content across paid, organic, and owned channels. Finally, we scale distribution by pairing organic UGC with a network of micro creators and campus ambassadors who amplify what is already resonating. The brands that win treat UGC as a content supply chain, not a lucky accident. When you have a repeatable process for discovery, rights management, and amplification, organic content becomes a powerful engine for both creativity and performance.
Glenn Ginsburg, President, QYOU Media
To get the most out of organic UGC, brands need to treat discovery as a discipline. We rely on TikTok discovery, Instagram discovery, and manual on-platform keyword searches aligned to the behaviors and moments we want to capture. Human insight still matters and knowing what to search for and identifying creators already showing authentic brand affinity is where the real value lies. Outside of what platforms natively provide, automation remains limited. Most AI tools don’t offer true real-time monitoring, and building custom scraping solutions is expensive and time-consuming. That’s why smart workflows matter: consistent search cadences, clear tagging systems, and fast rights outreach processes. Finally, think beyond reposting. Secure rights early and activate winning content across paid social, CTV, retail media, and commerce. When structured properly, organic UGC becomes an always-on creative engine.
Ashley Mady, President, Zigazoo
One of the biggest challenges with organic UGC is that kids and teens are often left out of the ecosystem entirely. For audiences under 13 especially, regulations like COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act) mean many platforms limit the features that typically allow users to create, share, and interact with content. That means brands aren’t just missing content. They’re missing insight into how the next generation communicates, what they care about, and how they express themselves creatively. The opportunity is creating environments where kids and teens can participate safely and authentically. Platforms with strong moderation and clear guardrails make it possible for younger audiences to be creators and generate UGC within a compliant ecosystem. In moderated environments, brands can safely observe how kids and teens create, what themes resonate, and what language emerges organically. On Zigazoo, for example, moderated challenges help make that possible while maintaining appropriate oversight. The most valuable UGC isn’t just creative output. It’s a window into the culture of the next generation.
Keith Bendes, Chief Strategy Officer, Linqia
We regularly work with partners to do ongoing UGC audits, whereby we 1) Track all mentions of the brand/category, 2) Determine if we want to either acquire the rights to that specific content or connect with that person about doing a custom partnership around new content, and 3) Contract according to how the person/creator reacts to the request. This is a really effective way to turn fans into your creators, as they have proven existing brand or category love.
Shawn Munir, Founder, Yamammi
At scale, the most important part of UGC is rights management. We usually work with creators who sign an agreement before producing content. That agreement covers usage rights and buyout terms upfront. If a brand later wants to extend usage for ads, additional markets, or longer licensing, we simply add an extension to the agreement. Once the creator signs, we make the collaboration attractive so they’re motivated to produce strong content. That means a clear brief, simple process, and strong brand positioning. After the content is delivered, our editorial team reviews it, makes small adjustments if needed, and prepares it for publishing across the brand’s channels. My advice to brands is simple: secure the rights early, build a consistent creator pipeline system, and treat UGC like an ongoing content engine rather than random posts. The brands that win are producing new content every week.
Tobias Hoss, Senior Advisor, Lunar X
Organic UGC only becomes valuable at scale when brands treat it as a system, not a lucky accident. Most teams still rely on manual discovery and one-off permissions, which makes it hard to operationalize. The best setups combine three layers. First, structured discovery through social listening and community signals to identify high-quality fan content early. Second, a clear rights workflow, where creators can grant usage permissions quickly and transparently so content can actually be activated. Third, a content operating model that rapidly turns the best UGC into ads, storefront assets, and community storytelling. The key tip is to reward participation. When fans see their content recognized, reposted, or even financially rewarded, contribution compounds. The brands that win with UGC do not just harvest it. They design ecosystems where fans want to create.
Ashlie Finch, VP, Brand Strategy, The Digital Dept.
At The Digital Dept., we approach UGC through three distinct strategies. The first is organic product seeding, where we gift product to carefully selected creators and allow them to post at their discretion. The second is a paid, curated UGC program, where we partner with UGC-focused creators to produce high-quality content specifically for brand use across social, web, and paid media. The third is a consumer-facing UGC campaign, where influencers lead a call-to-action encouraging their audiences to post brand-related content. Each serves a different purpose, whether building a loyal creator community, to delivering reliable, high-quality assets at scale, to driving broader awareness and engagement. Our philosophy is quality over quantity. Rather than sending product to thousands of creators blindly, we prioritize thoughtful casting and relationship-building. Organic programs often become a valuable testing ground, helping us understand which creators, audiences, and creative approaches resonate most. These insights inform future paid campaigns and larger brand initiatives.
Abraham Lieberman, CEO, Clicks Talent
Organic UGC is one of the most underutilized growth levers for brands today. The key is not just collecting content from customers and fans, but building a structured process around discovery, rights management, and activation. At Clicks Talent, we see the most successful brands combine organic UGC with creator partnerships. Influencers and micro-creators often spark the first wave of authentic content, which then encourages real users to participate and share their own experiences. To scale this effectively, brands should focus on three things: clear rights management, efficient content sourcing through communities and creators, and strong repurposing strategies across paid ads, social media, and landing pages. The brands that win with UGC are those that treat it not as random content, but as a scalable creative engine powered by real people.
Noah Tucker, Founder, Social Snowball
Turning customers into affiliates is a powerful way to generate UGC from your customer base. By giving customers a referral incentive, they will create content on social media with the goal of driving purchases. This content is often perfect for ad creatives or whitelisting since it is authentic and from real customers.
Marine Didierlaurent, Head of Social, Clark Influence
Organic UGC is often seen as a scalable content resource, but behind every post is a real person who chose to share their experience with a brand. As brands increasingly rely on community content to fuel their creative output, respecting that contribution becomes essential. The challenge today isn’t finding UGC, social media are full of it, but managing it responsibly and at scale. That requires clear internal processes to monitor conversations, identify valuable content, request permissions quickly, and organize assets so they can be reused across social media, paid campaigns, and other digital touchpoints.
Transparency is key. Explicit consent, clarity around how the content will be used, and proper credit whenever possible should always be part of the workflow. When approached thoughtfully, organic UGC becomes more than a content source, it becomes a powerful way to build authentic relationships between brands and their communities.
Owen Massey, Senior Director, Jukin Licensing (Division of Trusted Media Brands)
At Jukin, we’ve worked with authentic video creators since UGC first became “a thing”. We’ve grown our brand-safe content library steadily over the years and now, along with human-powered curation, we also use AI to find, onboard, and rights manage this content so that it’s ready and available for clients to license at the drop of a hat. Organic content is exactly that – real, relatable, moments that brands can use to optimize engagement with their audiences. While AI greatly helps us find and leverage this content, videos of true human experience and connectivity reign supreme.
Amy Cotteleer, Chief Experience Officer & Partner, Duncan Channon
We use Tagger by Sprout Social (and still do some good old-fashioned scrolling through our feeds) to discover standout creator content, then recommend managing campaigns and rights through a platform like CreatorIQ so assets can be cleared and activated at scale. Key tips for brands: proactively request usage rights, collaborate with creators on deliverables that can be easily repurposed, amplify top-performing UGC with paid media, and build long-term relationships so creators consistently produce on-brand assets you can reuse across channels. It’s also important to prioritize simple legal templates and a streamlined approval workflow to speed time to activation.
Craig Vallado, Talent & Campaign Manager, Clicks Talent
Organic UGC works best when brands treat it as a scalable content engine rather than a one-off repost opportunity. In our campaigns, we use a mix of social listening, hashtag monitoring and close relationships with creator communities to identify content that is already resonating with audiences. Once strong content is surfaced, securing usage rights and organizing it properly allows brands to extend its lifespan across organic channels, paid media and broader campaign rollouts. One of the biggest mistakes we see is brands overproducing UGC after acquiring it. The reason it performs well is because it feels native to the platform and relatable to the audience. The brands that see the strongest results are consistently sourcing content from real customers and creators who already enjoy the product, allowing them to scale creative while maintaining authenticity.
Jessica Thorpe, CEO,partnrUP
The controversial truth: most brands already have more usable content than they realize. At partnrup.ai, we automated the entire process because the bottleneck is not creators. It is operations. Our system searches social platforms to find relevant creators and real customers already talking about a product. It evaluates audience quality, context, and brand fit, then automatically sends personalized outreach explaining why the creator is a match. If they accept, the platform generates the agreement, handles rights permissions, and automates payment once content is delivered. Now imagine what happens if you recapture days of your work week. Instead of chasing contracts and invoices, teams can test more ads, repurpose creator videos across DTC or Amazon product pages or brand’s own socials – and actually use the content they already have rights to more consistently.
Elizabeth Arnold, Chief Growth Officer, ViralMoment
Brands are sitting on a huge volume of customer-created video. I use video intelligence tools like ViralMoment to surface that UGC and analyze the videos themselves, not just captions. That means detecting brand mentions in speech, on-screen text, logos, and comments across platforms, which quickly shows where a brand is appearing and why. Step one is visibility: surface the videos tied to the brand. Step two is context: understand why the brand is showing up there. Is it appearing in unexpected communities like MomTok? Are creators using the product in ways the team had not considered? Step three is organization: save standout videos and creators into collections so they are easy to revisit, assess for outreach, and manage for potential usage rights. Step four is activation: use those patterns to guide creator partnerships, new content, and broader strategy. That process turns organic video into a scalable creative and cultural advantage.
Natalia Serna, CEO,Goldfish Group
User-generated content only becomes truly powerful when brands can operate it at scale, and that’s where technology – especially AI – becomes essential. The promise of UGC isn’t a handful of posts; it’s hundreds or even thousands of pieces of content created by real users. But identifying creators, managing outreach, securing permissions, and organizing assets manually quickly becomes inefficient and expensive. If too many human hours are required, the model simply doesn’t deliver a strong ROI. This is why AI and automation are becoming the backbone of scalable UGC programs. AI agents can help identify potential creators, manage large-scale communication, automate licensing workflows, and organize content libraries so brands can activate assets efficiently. At Goldfish, for example, we developed GoldfishDNA, a proprietary platform that allows us to communicate with thousands of creators simultaneously and automate contracts and licensing. Without this kind of infrastructure, scaling UGC is extremely difficult. Otherwise, brands may find it more efficient to work with a smaller number of macro or mega influencers instead of trying to manage UGC manually.
Iluka Enright, Senior Influencer Manager, Movers+Shakers
On the practical side, we’ve built an exclusive Movers & Creators Network, a continuously growing Rolodex of UGC-specific creators across the US that we pull from daily for our clients. This gives our clients access to creators and content that already feels organic because it is organic. Organic search is always the starting point: being genuinely ingrained in culture means you naturally see who’s creating relevance, not just who has reach. The real power of UGC is its ability to feel like the opposite of an ad. The moment it feels produced, you’ve lost it.
My tip: stop waiting for UGC to come to you. Build the infrastructure to find it, capture it, and deploy it at scale
Sophia Trunzo, Co-Founder & CRO,Loopholes
Sourcing UGC is a huge way to scale creative, but it only works if you have a workflow to find, capture, and activate it safely. I usually start by identifying where the most engaged fans live – social channels, reviews, or communities – and then collect content with clear permissions. From there, treat it like any other asset: optimize, tag, and run it through a quick compliance check before going live. Tools like Loopholes make this part seamless, letting you scan copy, images, videos, and audio for any potential policy risks before campaigns hit publish. The key is to start small, measure performance, and scale what resonates – that’s how UGC becomes a real growth engine without creating risk.
Ritik Karanwal, Influencer Talent Agent, Clicks Talent
The most powerful content often comes from fans who genuinely love your brand. The key isn’t just finding it – it’s capturing it, getting rights, and putting it to work without losing its authenticity. Hashtags, mentions, and reviews are your treasure maps, and tools can help organize and scale it. But the magic happens when you celebrate your creators, make sharing easy, and treat UGC as a real partnership. Authentic voices resonate, multiply creative output, and perform better across social, ads, and email. Consistency, care, and smart repurposing turn this organic content into campaigns that feel human, real, and unforgettable.