UGC Creator: What I’ve Learned Two Years In.

What I’ve learned being a UGC Creator for the last two years…

I’ve been a content creator for almost 10 years which is wild – and for the last two of those, I’ve had the honour of being a UGC Creator for lots of my favourite brands. With two years of UGC work under my belt, I thought that I’d share what I’ve learned, with a few tips thrown in here and there.

What is UGC?

UGC is brand requested content that can be created by anyone. Rather than influencer content, it’s content made for the brand’s social media channels and marketing use. UGC has become huge lately, because it feels a lot more authentic and the content performs better in ads.

So what have I learned as a UGC creator over the last two years?

Not Underselling Myself

It’s so easy to undersell yourself when you first start out as a UGC Creator – I did it at first! Initially, I was under the impression that because the content wasn’t going on my social channels to an audience, it wasn’t worth as much. In some cases this can be still be true, if you’re a celebrity influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers then you’re going to be charging a lot more than UGC Creators. However, as a micro creator (under 50k) I soon learned that my UGC work was worth almost the same, if not as much as my social channel work. 

I remember accepting £100 per video for a multi-video job and at the time, because it was a bundle it seemed like a really good deal. I wouldn’t dream of accepting that now, usually my lowest UGC job pays more than £500 per video. At the end of the day, I’m essentially being a content creator, videographer and marketer all in one job. Hiring a UGC Creator is still 20x cheaper than having to hire a full team of creative people. The right brands will pay creators what they’re worth, and if they won’t, they aren’t worth my time.

Letting Go Of Creative Control

As a content creator, letting go of creative control can be incredibly hard, but it’s necessary when working with brands for content that’s going on their channels, and being used as an ad. Sometimes I really have to bite my tongue with some of the briefs that I receive in my inbox, because they’re full of ideas that I would never shoot myself, or scripts with sentences in that I would never personally say. But at the end of the day, I’m being hired to do a job for a brand so if they want full creative control, I need to let them have it.

It doesn’t necessarily mean that their ideas are really good, and sometimes they won’t do well with an audience, but that isn’t my issue to solve as I have followed the brief that I was given. Often brands will leave creative control to me, or ask for an idea or script that they can then approve. If they allow that, then I love going all in with my ideas. If they don’t, I’m better off just sticking to what they want or I’m risking my relationship with them and the opportunity for future work.

Knowing When To Keep Brands Happy

This kind of comes hand in hand with the above, but being friendly with the brands and agencies that I work with means that I’m more likely to get future work from them. It’s even better when I have a contact that I get along really well with as sometimes it can be a case of who you know, not what you know! However, more often than not, it’s all about being polite, friendly and making myself easy to work with. It’s something that’s so important in the UGC industry, as I tend to make the most money from brands who keep hiring me again and again for different projects.

I personally find this quite hard at times as like in all lines of work, you do get people and brands that are really difficult to work with. It’s a huge learning curve when running your own business, to keep emails professional and polite, whilst still standing up for yourself when needed. You should never let anyone walk all over you, but sometimes going out of your way to do the odd favour here and there can really be appreciated by brands/agencies, and keep that relationship secure.

Learning How To Story tell

UGC requires a bit more storytelling than content that’s created for my own social media channels. When I create content for myself, I’m generally speaking to an audience that already follows me and knows me. When creating UGC for brands, it involves creating a story and selling a product, and often speaking to an audience that has no idea who I am personally. However, both forms of content need to be relatable to the audience that’s watching them, and this is quite a significant skill that has to be learned. It’s like all things in life and it really does get better the more that I do it. For example, I cringe at some of my first ever UGC voice overs, they definitely come much more naturally now that I’ve been doing it for a while!

Not Being Such A Perfectionist

This may sound strange, but sometimes I get so in my head when I’m working with a big brand on some content, and often trying to over-perfect the content isn’t the right way to go. At the end of the day, brands are getting in touch because they like the content that I create, and it can be really hard sometimes to just chill out and do what I already do best. If I’ve spent far too much time overthinking every element of a video, it never turns out as well as it does when I just get on with it. The best content is normally the content that I think isn’t that good – this is certainly the case with viral videos!

If you’re a UGC creator, what would you say has been a learning curve throughout your content journey?