Having seen enough creator content, I find it pretty easy to tell when someone’s posting just because they’re paid to. Those types of posts may look great, but aren’t exactly memorable. Meanwhile, influencer partnerships that feel genuine tend to stand out and leave a lasting impact. They go beyond one-off posts and instead foster authentic influencer relations that generate repeatable, ROI-driving assets through smart UGC strategies.
In this post, I show you how to structure, deploy, and repurpose influencer content that earns trust, performs on paid, and lives long past launch day. Let’s take a look.
A typical influencer marketing campaign generally involves recruiting influencers to create sponsored posts. This allows brands to get their products in front of the influencer’s audience, which maximizes reach. Influencer partnerships go beyond this to generate real relationships with influencers. This results in more authentic and unprompted content because the creator is deeply integrated with the brand.
As such, these partnerships are more than just another campaign. Instead, they involve a true collaboration between the creator and the brand, resulting in reusable and impactful UGC that yields long-term results.
A sponsored post is a social media post that an influencer creates based on an agreement with a brand in exchange for a fee. It may feature the brand’s products or services in a way that’s required by the brand – whether it’s highlighting the benefits or creating something using the product.
While there’s nothing wrong with sponsored posts, they tend to be more limited and transactional. Influencers are only creating these posts because they’re paid to do so. And they’ll typically only create a specific number of posts according to their existing agreement. So if they’re paid to create two Instagram Reels and a TikTok video, they normally wouldn’t create anything else beyond these.
Meanwhile, a strategic partnership doesn’t necessarily have these restrictions in place. Brands and influencers may form a partnership that involves a deep collaboration between the two, which may even extend to product co-creation and co-branding.
Take, for example, when McDonald’s partnered with Travis Scott for a multi-tiered collaboration. The partnership involved a Travis Scott meal available for a limited time across participating restaurants. It also featured exclusive Cactus Jack x McDonald’s merch, such as t-shirts and hoodies.
With the influencer being deeply involved in product development and co-branding, it allowed for a deeper integration into the campaign. Travis Scott ended up enthusiastically promoting the partnership through his own socials and even visited some McDonald’s locations to generate hype.
Additionally, creators came up with native-feel TikToks and Instagram content to bring further visibility to the collaboration. Trends like “Cactus Jack sent me” became viral as creators shared TikToks of their experiences using the phrase to order the meal. Some would share unboxing videos of the merch, which also contributed to the virality.
So instead of just one-off posts, McDonald’s ended up with unprompted content that has an organic feel, creating an impactful cultural moment with this influencer partnership.
As seen from the McDonald’s example above, user-generated content has the power to amplify your campaign’s reach, resulting in influencer partnerships that deliver long-term results. A campaign that manages to generate content from creators and everyday consumers alike will be able to exponentially reach a bigger audience, which ultimately drives bigger results.
And there’s a reason the two (influencer-generated content and UGC) need to work together. When influencers create UGC for your brand, they instantly get your brand in front of a massive audience. This brings visibility to your campaign and results in others creating more content inspired by influencers.
When Coca-Cola brought back the iconic “Share a Coke” campaign, influencers played a crucial role in helping the brand tap into a Gen Z audience across social media. These influencers shared photos of Coca-Cola bottles and cans featuring their names, which inspired others to also share their own posts.
As more and more consumers create UGC, it further expands your reach across their network, allowing you to get your brand in front of even more people. This could even fuel virality in some cases.
The best part is that UGC doesn’t just help you maximize your reach, but it also improves trust factor. In fact, 84% of consumers trust recommendations from peers over other forms of advertising.
This makes sense because branded content and ads may not always tell the truth. Meanwhile, reviews and content from other consumers paint a more realistic picture. Personally, I always check out customer photos and reviews before buying something online. And whenever I discover new restaurants and services through my Instagram mutuals, their experiences guide my buying decisions.
So leveraging UGC from influencers and everyday users is a great way to earn consumer trust and influence purchases. You can even use paid advertising campaigns to further amplify the impact of influencer content and UGC. This could deliver impressive results because UGC-based ads generate 4x higher click-through rate compared to ads made by professionals.
I’ve been seeing a lot of brands making the most of UGC in their ad campaigns. See how Two Brothers Organic Farms reuses a customer’s Instagram Story in the following ad. The customer shares a photo of the product and highlights the benefits she’s experienced from using it. Seeing the real experiences of everyday consumers is an effective way to instantly boost trust and drive results.
If you’re planning to get long-term benefits from your influencer partnerships, it’s important to structure them for scalable UGC right from the start. This involves preparing your agreements and content deliverables with the intention to repurpose and reuse them. Otherwise, you could be left with legal conflicts and last-minute adjustments that eat away at your productivity.
Perfecting your contract is vital to ensure a seamless influencer partnership. This will help you avoid misunderstandings and legal conflicts further down the line. If you’re building a campaign with UGC marketing in mind, make sure to include usage terms that specify how you can reuse the content.
Clearly break down content licensing terms and specify who has ownership of the content, who can reuse it, how long you can use it for, and which platforms you can use it on. You should also include clauses for variations such as multiple hook options, different video lengths, etc.
So influencers have a clear idea of what’s expected of them right from the start, which will allow them to deliver accordingly. It saves you the trouble of going back and forth to request changes and variations. When you clearly specify deliverables in your contract, it also helps you avoid disagreements with creators.
You can learn more about how to contract influencers using our guide. And check out our influencer contract FAQs to address your legal concerns. When you’re ready to draft the contract, use our influencer contract template to ensure you nail all the essential terms.
Scaling your UGC campaigns requires lots and lots of testing. This means you need to A/B test different variations of influencer UGC to see what works best. That way, you can reinvest in content that delivers impressive results, allowing you to maximize your influencer marketing ROI.
Be upfront about the need for different content formats, aspect ratios, and lengths. That way, influencers can prepare several variations that you can easily test for effectiveness. And you don’t have to chase them down later on or spend hours editing something they’ve already submitted.
For instance, you could ask influencers to submit a horizontal and vertical variation of the same image. Or you could ask them to share a 15-second and a 60-second clip of the same video with captions and with no captions.
To generate valuable UGC from your influencer partnerships, you need to be strategic with your approach. Check out these pro tips and best practices to help you out:
The more you can stretch the content lifespan, the more value it can generate. So you need to be strategic with how and where you reuse and repurpose the UGC. Find a way to reuse the content across multiple marketing channels in addition to your brand’s socials. Here are a few examples:
Notice how Junkless Foods reused influencer-generated content for Instagram Reels:
TikTok:
And YouTube Shorts:
Sometimes, you may need to go beyond simply reposting the content across different channels. Content repurposing may require breaking longer videos into GIFs, boomerangs, or even memes. You can also add voiceovers, dynamic CTAs, and product overlays to further extend the use of influencer UGC.
For example, consider using the green screen effect on Instagram and TikTok to apply an influencer’s video to the background of a popular meme or vice versa.
Not all influencer-generated content delivers the same impact. Some posts may resonate really well with your audience while others get a lukewarm response. Additionally, even your top-performing content may not have the same impact on other channels. So simply reusing each and every piece of content doesn’t necessarily lead to higher returns.
That’s why you need to track the performance of influencer content across channels. Assign UTM codes to each piece of content, so you know which ones are delivering results. Similarly, you can use influencer-specific codes to identify your best influencers and form long-term partnerships with them.
Having a clear idea of influencer and content-specific performance will also give you the insights you need to provide constructive feedback. See which posts are performing well and which ones are lacking, so you can identify key feedback points for each piece of content. These insights will also help you improve future creative briefs.
On a related note, make sure to negotiate platform rights with creators from the get-go. This is especially important if you plan on reusing their content for paid media. Being transparent about how and where you’ll reuse their content can prevent misunderstandings and conflicts.
Creators may charge more for additional platform rights and paid media usage. Consider negotiating lower fees in exchange for additional perks. For instance, you could offer long-term partnership opportunities, free products, and exclusive previews.
Authenticity is what makes UGC stand out. It’s the very element that makes the content more relatable and trustworthy. So avoid over-scripting creators, as this could make the content seem rigid and unnatural.
UGC thrives with freedom, which means you need to hand over the reins to creators. Trust them to come up with something that speaks to the audience.
Knowing how to generate long-term value from influencer UGC is just the start. You also need to be equipped with powerful tools to help you manage the content more effectively. That’s where Influencity comes in, providing you with key features to track, organize, and analyze your influencer content.
Influencity’s tracking feature lets you collect posts from specific influencer profiles. You can set the content rules to automatically track posts that use certain hashtags, brand mentions, or keywords. This makes it easy to track influencer UGC by campaign and format.
You can also use the Influencer Pages to organize any influencer-specific information. You can add notes about deliverables and usage rights for each influencer to easily keep track of the info.
Influencity also makes it easy to report performance across your organic and paid channels. You can visualize the campaign performance as a whole or break down post-specific performance insights to see what works best.
Influencer partnerships can work hand in hand with UGC marketing to maximize results and generate long-term impact. But this requires strategic planning so you can extend the content lifespan across different channels and formats. That way, you get long-term, scalable value from your partnerships and improve your bottom line.
Make the most of the tips, ideas, and best practices I shared above to power influencer-backed UGC marketing.