Discover the best UK UGC platforms for your Shopify store

What is user-generated content?

User-generated content (UGC) is brand-specific content that can come in a wide range of content such as; a video, text, testimonial, image, review, or comment made by unpaid contributors or customers. Usually, this content is posted on social media channels like Instagram, Facebook, or TikTok where the creator's followers may be influenced by their posts or comments. UGC is a highly effective method applied by brands looking to leverage authentic content by building a brand community, increasing brand awareness, and enhancing users' trust in said brand. Unlike branded content, UGC is seen as a credible and trustworthy source of information for users seeking an honest point of view of a brand's product or service.

Adding user-generated video content to your Shopify store creates an authentic and engaging experience for your site's users or viewers. These videos hold a viewer's attention for a longer period, therefore, they are satisfied by the clear view of the product's features and usage. If you want to enhance your Shopify store's engagement, conversion rates, and credibility, then you just need to implement user-generated content in your store and you'll see! 

What is a UGC Platform?

A UGC platform streamlines the way brands discover content creators and source user-generated content for their websites or media channels. This type of UGC software is leveraged by both brands and creators looking to collaborate in a more effortless manner. However, these platforms don't just create a space where brands and creators can meet, they also measure the performance of your brand's UGC, manage contracts or user and brand rights, create content, and provide many other valuable tools…

The purpose of these platforms is to encourage creators to share their content and engage with others. UGC software has an infrastructure equipped with essential tools that help content creators publish their material efficiently. Additionally, it reduces the time it would otherwise take marketers to discover talent, source media, and cover legal rights to use content created from outside sources. It is also the perfect method to stay organized and filter through different content creators or a community of creators your brand could partner with.

Studies have shown that when UGC is featured on your brand's platform of choice, there is a remarkable 29% increase in web conversions. Simply put, this implies that the incorporation of authentic content created directly by users and brands can drive more sales and revenue. Furthermore, in today's world, 70% of consumers rely on UGC as a trustworthy source for product information prior to making purchases. This underscores the importance of UGC in shaping and influencing consumer behaviour.

The main benefits of utilising UGC software

Increase brand awareness

Utilising UGC software increases brand awareness by curating authentic content at a faster pace, considering you only need one platform to source the UGC content. Having UGC on your e-commerce site builds trust and shares and a raw point of view of your product or service. The more that potential buyers and existing customers can trust your brand, the greater the chance is of you fostering a community by offering authentic, diverse content. Transparency is an important aspect of marketing today, since the more trustworthy your brand is, the more likely it will boost your visibility. Brands and retailers all agree that visual UGC is the most effective tool for increasing brand visibility. Research shows that 91% of individuals using UGC, classify it as an engagement tool for creative experiences and 82% believe that it increases brand discoverability. Having UGC content also, enhances your search engine optimization (SEO) due to a stream of relevant content, hence resulting in more brand awareness and engagement. 

Time-saving

UGC platforms can save your company a lot of time in content curation and sourcing partners. By leveraging these platforms, your brand will be able to avoid having to discover UGC content via hashtags or scrolling through posts and comments in order to discover the perfect content. Instead, to save your marketing team time, UGC platforms gather all the relevant UGC that meets your specific requirements and provide you with this information directly. As a result, you are able to spend more time on other aspects of your marketing strategy.

Increased user outreach

These user bases on UGC platforms are continuously growing. Utilising these platforms helps brands enter diverse markets and reach numerous creators or communities without being limited by geographical constraints or large marketing budgets.

Cost-effective and high-quality content

Firstly, UGC itself is a cost-effective solution for businesses looking to advertise their brand without spending a large sum of their budget on promotion strategies. Having unpaid contributors create content for your brand is a highly effective method to reduce the financial burden of creating content via in-house production or external marketing (outsourcing). In short, it significantly reduces the costs related to the production of high-quality content, by leveraging a brand's own user base for content creation.

Centralized management

Brands using these platforms are provided with a central place to manage their UGC and creator partnerships. It essentially makes it easier to discover the best UGC to promote your brand.

Security

UGC platforms can help with filtering out inappropriate or infringing content. They offer a system for both brands and creators where fraudulent content, unauthorised access, and protection against spam are directly provided. This maintains the integrity of the content shared and partnerships being made. It is also safe due to being able to share and sign contracts as well as making payments. UGC software prioritizes and maintains legal protection for anyone using its platform.

Automated Content Curation

Automated content creation tools help brands discover and display the most accurate UGC, which saves a lot of the effort and time that would've otherwise been spent on content management.

Collaboration tools

UGC platforms offer a variety of essential content creation tools and collaboration features. Some of these tools include; email marketing or other means of communication, media sharing, website integration, client discovery with AI, content creation tools, and so on… They streamline the content creation process and provide seamless collaboration through content approval workflows via different means of communication.

Improve your Shopify store's content strategy with these 6 great UK UGC platforms

UpWork

Upwork is an e-commerce freelance marketplace that connects businesses with creative freelancers from all over the globe. This platform allows professionals to discover wide-ranging jobs or projects posted by clients. This is a great solution to connect startups and growing businesses to cover specific needs and avoid the overhead costs of hiring full-time staff. They can discover talent for long or short-term contracts, complex projects, and other specific skills. Once they create a job posting on Upwork, clients are able to interview, hire, and work with freelancers directly on the platform.

Some top Industries represented on Upwork ranking, from most represented to less represented, are;

1. Marketing and Advertising
2. Computer Software
3. Information Technology and Services
4. Graphic Designs
5. Writing and Editing

Pricing

Upwork has three different pricing options

Firstly, it offers something called a Talent Marketplace, which is free and great for small or growing businesses. As a brand on UpWork, for every payment you make to freelancers for hourly jobs and fixed prices, bonuses, project catalogues, and BYO contracts, you will need to pay a 5% Client Marketplace Fee. You will be able to connect with freelancers from over 90+ different categories and pick from 10,000 skills. You can create a job posting for free and begin receiving applications from freelancers in just 24 hours after posting the job offer.

The second option is the Project Catalogue, which is a Pay As You Go pricing plan. The Project Catalogue creates fixed-priced projects for your brand. You can choose from 300+ categories with 300,000 project options.

Lastly, you have the Enterprise Sulte, which is an end-to-end solution, that offers great support to large businesses in the process of managing, recruiting, and paying freelancers all while following the global worker classification laws.

Additionally, as of May 2023, Upwork has changed its fee structure to make it less complicated. As a freelancer, you now only need to pay a 10% freelancer service fee on the earnings you make, rather than using the sliding fee. All your contracts with a client are charged with this fee which is implemented on hourly, fixed-price, or project catalogue contracts. This new fee makes it easier for new entries to begin freelancing on the platform. Furthermore, the platform has also, added a client contract initiation fee of $4.95 for new clients on Upwork's Marketplace and Project Catalogue. However, this fee is only charged once per contract. To add to that, agencies that work with non-enterprise clients also need to pay this 10% freelancer service fee on contracts.

If you'd like to see the payment of this fee, then you can go to your Transaction History Report. On the other hand, your Weekly Billing Summary will display payments to freelancers.

Advantages

These features are available to all clients:

• Having access to premium talent
• Businesses can invite 30 freelancers to their job
• You will have more report options such as; weekly summary, transactions, budgets, time by freelancer, etc…
• You receive advanced member settings and coworker teams
• Advanced freelancer search
• You will pay a fee only when you make payments, rather than having to pay a monthly subscription.
• When organizing work on hourly contracts, you will have activity codes.

Features

• Large user base: Has over 12 million freelancers on the platform, offering many sets of skills.
• Payment protection: They have an integrated payment system that offers protection and ensures security for both freelancers and clients (businesses). This means payments are safe to be made directly on the platform and businesses are conveniently able to oversee all these transactions in one location.
• Discovering talent: The platform leverages its built-in AI and its algorithm to match clients with freelancers that best fit their projects/needs.
• Tracking: Upwork is able to track the time freelancers spend on tasks, which allows businesses to know how their projects are progressing and can ensure they will receive value for their investment. The platform also has reports on billable hours.
• Easy communication: Upwork provides chat, video calls, and file sharing as a means of communication between clients and freelancers.

Billo

This cloud-based social commerce platform is created for small to midsized businesses looking to collaborate with video creators and produce custom videos for their brands. It's the perfect platform for sourcing short video marketing videos. These custom videos can be anything from how-to videos, to stories, testimonials, 360 videos, unboxing content, and so on. The goal here is to enhance the brand's social credibility and visibility across multiple social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Shopify, and Amazon. 15,000+ brands have already joined this platform to connect with talented creators.

Pricing

Firstly, you can sign up for Billo free of charge. Billo takes care of all payments between brands and creators, hence making it an easy transaction and ensuring the safety of both parties.

Competitive advantage

• Billo is quite easily accessible in that you are able to access its data from your phone, tablet, and computer.
• As a business on Billo you can have ownership of the content you receive on the platform without needing to separately sign contracts with every creator you work with.

Features

• Communication: This is a communication channel where businesses can communicate with creators directly on the platform itself. This streamlines the process of exchanging information and ensuring that campaigns run smoothly.
• No subscription: Businesses can sign up to Billo for free and browse the platform's network of content creators. As a brand, you use the pay-as-you-go (PAYG) pricing model. This means you pay based on the amount you consume, in other words, you do not charge a fixed fee upfront. Hence, brands on Billo will pay only for the videos they commission. With this model, brands have more control over their marketing budget, therefore they allocate their resources towards services that are most relevant to their needs.
• Lifetime Content Rights: Billo offers lifetime content rights to brands who optimize their website to create custom content with creators. After this content has been produced and paid for, businesses can reuse it or repurpose it permanently without any additional fees or limitations. This allows businesses to leverage the content created through Billo via various marketing channels like social media, email campaigns, advertising, and so on… Additionally, it means these brands can further benefit from the content long after the initial campaign has ended, hence maximising the ROI and their UGC marketing efforts.
• Custom Video Parameters: Billo's custom video settings aid businesses in crafting video content that is tailored to their brand and messaging. This ensures that their video content is aligned with their marketing objectives and builds a connection with their target audience. In doing so, Billo is successfully distinguishing itself in the competitive digital environment by building a strong brand identity using its video content. Billo provides custom video parameters to businesses seeking to create video content. As a result of this, brands can partner with creators to generate personalized video content that meets their needs and requirements such as video duration, format, and style.
• Custom Photo Content: Billo presents businesses with the opportunity to request custom photo content from its network of creators. Moreover, it allows businesses to work with creators to craft high-quality and unique content that aligns perfectly with their brand and messaging. Through this photo offering, businesses on Billo are able to specify their photo requirements, such as the preferred style, type of photos required, the amount of photos required and any specific guidelines they wish creators to adhere to. Upon receiving this request, creators can begin their collaboration with the brand by creating custom photo content. Lastly, the platform gives businesses the ability to access and apply pre-existing influencer photos from Billo's library of user-generated content.
• Easy to use: Billo is a platform designed to be easy to use for both brands and creators. Having a user-friendly interface and a simplified workflow ensures that businesses can effortlessly find, collaborate with, pay creators, and produce custom content that is tailored to their precise needs. They also, offer a robust search feature that helps businesses discover relevant creators on the basis of locations, interests, and viewer demographics.
• Affordable: Billo offers cost-effective content creation services through its pool of content creators. In comparison to traditional advertising methods, businesses get the benefit of collaborating with creators to produce high-quality content at a more budget-friendly rate. Billo essentially offers businesses a network of creators. From this network, brands can find those who align with their brand and can produce tailored content that will resonate with their target audience. Furthermore, the platform provides scalability, allowing businesses to produce a variety of content for many channels at a much lower cost

Tribe

Just like the rest of the platforms already mentioned, Tribe bridges the gap between content creators and brands looking to improve their content strategy with UGC videos. Tribe advertises itself as a platform with a creator community, otherwise known as a network of influencers that other creators. It serves as a great source for brands looking to discover influencers or content creators for collaboration. It is designed to streamline how brands discover creators, run campaigns and measure their return on investment (ROI).

How can brands use it?

When brands are scouting for content creators using Tribe, they can make a request based on the type of business or need. On the other hand, your brand can make a campaign for a job and influencers can discover your campaign when browsing on the platform. Once they have seen your campaign, they can create content for it and submit it to your brief. Once this has taken place, you will be able to review submissions and purchase those that are most relevant. Finally, you can proceed to upload this content to your Shopify store and create a more authentic image for your brand.

Pricing

Tribe offers two annual subscription-based pricing plans for brands. It includes a standard subscription and a customized one. However, in general, it has 4 different pricing plans that include 2 subscriptions and 2 fees: TRIBE subscription, TRIBE Plus subscription, Campaign Activation Fee, and the TRIBE Fee.

Now, if your brand decides to subscribe to the platform, then it is essentially subscribing to have a long-term contract with TRIBE. This long-term contract gives your brand more access to the platform's features and team, which drive your creator community strategy for a longer period. It also allows brands to discover teams that will fuel their creator marketing strategies using TRIBE's tech and their teams' support. Once you subscribe, TRIBE's team will analyse your objectives and goals before they offer onboarding, training, and other types of support. To better understand the differences, these are the two TRIBE subscriptions:

• TRIBE: The standard subscription allows your business to access and utilize the platform's features. You will be provided with training and onboarding through your Customer Success manager.
• TRIBE Plus: This subscription is customized to meet a brand's specific needs and requirements. For this reason, the pricing is tailored, and your brand is offered premium-level services that help define your goals and create a successful strategy for your business.

If you want more flexibility to create one-off campaigns, then you utilize Tribe's Pay-Per-Use option. In contrast to campaigns being run under a subscription, all Pay-Per-Use campaigns have a Campaign activation fee. This fee in particular is charged when you set up your campaign, and the price is different depending on whether you have TRIBE or TRIBE Plus. This fee is charged when your brand and its Customer Manager are ready to make your campaign live. To be more specific, the starting budget for Pay-Per-Use campaigns is $10,000 and $2,000 for subscription campaigns.

Lastly, the TRIBE Fee is a margin on your brand's entire campaign spending. Brands that purchase campaigns are charged 30% of their marketing campaign spend, and this 30% goes to the platform. That means that Tribe's campaign management fee takes 30% off the amount a brand pays to run a campaign. The rest of the money is paid to creators that produce the content. Moreover, the fee only takes place when a brand has approved an influencer post. This same margin applies to influencers who pay to submit their work.

Features

TRIBE is focused on providing access to branded content by forming a creator community that already uses and supports your products or services. Now, as stated in the pricing information, there are influencer marketing campaigns and content campaigns. An influencer campaign consists of a project outlined by a brand that influencers participate in by proposing their own ideas. Then, brands pick the influencer they want to collaborate with.

On the other hand, TRIBE content campaigns have brands presenting a project brief, to which premium creators respond by submitting relevant content. Once this content is licensed, the brand can use it on any platform.

Now, to discover more of its features, have a look at the list below:

• Tribe's inbox: This feature can be used to manage relationships and discuss topics such as payments, sampling, approvals, etc…
• AI-powered creator matching
• Brand Safety
• Central management & creator comms
• Automated Creator Ad Boosting workflows 
• Creator briefing, pitching, and content delivery
• Content Library that is always on and has automated content licensing 
• Community Manager & Community Executive
• ROI Tracking
• Performance Metrics (Reporting & Statistics)
• Social Media Integration
• Third-Party Integrations
• Campaign Analytics and Management
• Multi-Campaigns
• Campaign optimization
• Brand-fan groups
• Content Management
• Influencer relationship management
• influencer sourcing & tracking
• Strategic Business reviews

Twirl

Twirl is a new platform founded in 2022, that connects brands and talented creators with barely any communication from either side. This is the perfect space to market your ideas and build a creator team effortlessly. This platform is a great space for those who want to study new trends, ad creative, and build their own personal ad library they can later market to brands. It is software that can be used by agencies, brands, or creators for ad inspiration and creation.

Industries

• Beauty
• Apps/Software
• Fashion
• Food 7 Drinks
• Pets
• Health/Wellness
• Home & Living
• Legal Finance & Insurance
• Mom & Baby
• Tech
• All

Pricing

Twirl has a relatively simple pricing strategy, as it applies a Pay-as-you-go method. Its pricing is flexible and requires no monthly recurring fees and no hidden fees. Twirl's pricing depends on the amount of video credits you want to have. You can purchase 20 video credits and use them whenever you'd like. You are only charged per video, therefore, the price varies depending on the number of videos. For more clarification, check out their pricing here.

In case you want a brief summary of their pricing, keep reading;

• If you want to have 1-4 video credits, then you will be charged $320 per video credit
• If you want to have between 5-9, then you will be charged $260
• Should you choose between 10-19 video credits, then you will need to pay $220 per video credits.
• Last but not least, if you'd like to have 20+ video credits, then you will be required to pay $195 per credit.

The first option is great for anyone who wants to test out the platform and see how well it works for them. The second pricing option is for those who are ready to improve their UGC. However, for brands and agencies that are still growing and want to leverage their growth via UGC, the third option will be the right fit. Lastly, having 20+ video credits is useful to brands or agencies that rely on frequent UGC for their growth.

Having 1 video credit includes benefits such as

• Usage rights
• Flexible video Length
• Raw & edited version
• Subtitles or music
• A revision per video
• A premium content creator
• multi-format delivery
• A project supervisor

Features

• UGC discovery: Twirl aids brands in locating UGC from many sources such as social media or review sites. Brands, marketers, or agencies can search for UGC by Keyword, hashtag, user, and so on.
• Simple brief builder: you can use this feature to be specific about your ad specs, concept, and creator requirements
• Creative Hub Tool: You can utilise this tool to brainstorm and form ideas, as well as use it to speak to Twirl's creative experts. Using this, you can discover, save ads and organise your library or collaborate with your team.
• Launch brief and match with creators: Once you launch your brief, there will be plenty of vetted creators applying to join. You can view all applications in one place, monitor the status of your project on your dashboard, and receive support on your project.
• High-quality UGC: you can select creators, then ship products, and get content quickly. You are able to submit revisions directly on the platform. Additionally, you can download and use your material on paid socials, websites, and email.
• Unlimited clients: You can add as many clients as you need to work with, and there is no charge or extra fees. All you need to do is select the client(s), you want to generate content for when making your next project.
• Flexible & simple pricing
• Performance optimization: You can add as many variations as you need to video projects, such as call-to-action (CTAs). You can also re-open old projects that you might want creators to generate more versions of ads.
• Seamless creator management
• Unlimited usage rights
• Diver creators that create high-quality content
• Free creative strategy support
• Public share links: you are able to share links without a watermark to creators and clients.
• Multi-user accounts: you can add team members to manage projects under one account, which is perfect for organisations.
• Quick-add projects: the platform has a feature that allows you to recycle old projects in order to test new hooks or CTAs.
• UGC amplification: Twirl helps brands amplify their UGC by sharing it across their social media channels and other marketing channels. Users can also embed UGC on their website and in other marketing materials.
• Security: Twirl has UGC moderation, in other words, brands can moderate their UGC by removing fraudulent or spam content.
• UGC Rights: Brands manage the rights to their UGC on Twirl by getting permission from users to share the content they generate and to track the utilization of user-generated content.

FYPM

Overall, FYPM is a promising UGC platform for creators, talent managers, and businesses. Creators can join the platform to discover brands that will pay them to share their personal experience of the brand's product or service, with other creators. Talent Managers, use the platform to access the full length of FYPM data and tools. Consequently, using FYPM for businesses means you can receive insight into your influencer marketing efforts and acquire benchmarking tools. Once you have registered and own an account, you will be able to filter brand deals by niche, location, media, and brand category. 

Pricing

FYPM is still in development, therefore it is more of a basic review site and is free for creators. However, to join the website all you need to do is sign-up by completing the application requirement to join and then wait to be approved. Once you are approved, you will be able to access FYPM's services. The requirements to become a user are:

• Be an influencer, content creator, or manager
• Contribute an anonymous review

Features

• Brand score: This measures a brand's influencer friendliness based on the rating given by users of the platform. The score ranks you from 1-5, with 5 being the highest. The reviews analyse the user's overall experience, communication, creative freedom, and timeliness.
• FYMP Brand Explore: this tool allows brands to see what is being talked about on the platform. It also, helps you view and compare brands by Brand Score or other metrics like the percentage of reviews received, especially those with monetary compensation. Brands must have at least 5 reviews in order to make it in the tool for the metrics update.
• Personalized feed: FYPM will use AI to generate a personalized feed of content for each user, based on their interests and preferences.
• Immersive experiences: FYPM's website creates an immersive experience with 3D images and engages users with its content.
• Share updates with influencers on FYPM
• Access resources and benchmarking tools
• Receive insights to improve influencer marketing efforts
• Community building tools: FYPM will provide users with a variety of tools to build and connect with communities, such as groups, forums, and live events.
• Merch: the site sells merch as a way of creating a community out of the e-commerce world as well.

Conclusion

In conclusion, all five platforms have proven to be useful in the UK market. Implementing UGC is crucial in today's digital world, due to the growing competition of online businesses. Seeing as customers value authenticity and transparency, brands must display trustworthy information, which can be relayed the most effectively via UGC content. However, to be able to do so efficiently, it would be best for brands to leverage UGC platforms where they receive plenty of content in a timely manner and in one place.

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