The 8 best UGC platforms to engage your customers in 2024

Adding user-generated content into your marketing strategy can effectively engage your audience. 

This type of content offers your customers a genuine glimpse of how your product or service integrates into their daily lives, fostering an authentic connection with your audience.

Nonetheless, manually collecting such content can be time-consuming. 

That's where UGC platforms come into play. 

We have compiled a list of the finest user-generated content platforms to assist you in selecting the most suitable one for your strategy.

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What is an UGC platform ?

A UGC platform is an online tool that makes it easy to collect, curate and display content generated by users, often customers or fans of a brand. 

E-commerce brands have come to realize the importance of UGC platforms for engaging their audiences in a more authentic and sincere way. 

By encouraging users to contribute their own content, brands capitalize on the power of peer-to-peer recommendations and word-of-mouth marketing.

UGC platforms typically allow users to submit various forms of content, including photos, videos, reviews and testimonials, or social media interactions.

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Why use an UGC platform ?

Content shared on an UGC platform can provide valuable information about customers' preferences, feelings and usage habits. 

Brands can then use such data to fine-tune their marketing strategies and product offerings to better meet consumer needs.

What's more, UGC platforms create a sense of community and foster a stronger bond between the brand and its customers. 

Companies will also be able to display user-generated content on their websites, social media channels or marketing campaigns.

These real-life experiences and stories will reinforce trust and credibility with their audience, and thus boost conversion rates.

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8 key features to look for in an UGC platform

When choosing the perfect UGC platform for your e-commerce brand, you need to know what distinguishes the best tools on the market. 

Let us guide you: 

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1. Content moderation

An UGC platform must include strong content moderation tools. 

This will help ensure that content shared by users aligns with your brand's values and guidelines. 

The ability to filter out inappropriate or irrelevant material is crucial to both maintaining a positive brand image and providing a safe environment for users.

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2. Easy integration

Make sure your chosen UGC platform integrates seamlessly and easily with your website and social media channels.

Such smooth integration guarantees that user-generated content fits seamlessly into your brand's online presence.

It creates a consistent and engaging experience for both customers and creators.

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3. Diversity of content types

The best UGC platforms support a wide range of content types, such as photos, videos, reviews and more. 

This diversity of choice allows users to express themselves in a way that suits them.

They’ll choose what they are most comfortable with, making the content more captivating and easier to understand.

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4. Rights management

Make sure that the platform allows easy management of content rights. 

It's imperative to obtain users' consent to reuse their content in order to avoid any legal problems later on.

The platform must offer the right tools to request these authorizations.

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5. Analytics and insights

As so often in marketing, data is king! 

A valuable UGC platform provides comprehensive analytics and insights into user engagement, content performance and audience behavior. 

These metrics enable you to fine-tune your strategies and optimize your marketing campaigns.

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6. Customization options

Every brand has its own personality, and your UGC platform should be able to reflect it.

Look for a platform that allows you to customize the look and feel of your campaign.

Make sure it seamlessly aligns with your brand identity and enhances your overall visual storytelling.

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7. Community building

The essence of UGC lies in bringing your brand closer to its customers. 

Look for features that encourage user interaction, such as commenting, sharing and following.

This should enable you to create a thriving community around your brand.

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8. Gamification and incentives

To really engage your users and ignite their passion for creating UGC, look for a platform that features gamification elements and offers incentives. 

With challenges, contests and rewards for contributing creators, you can encourage them to get more involved with your brand.

Gamification not only stimulates content creation, but also fosters a sense of competition and community among users, leading to increased loyalty and enthusiasm.

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8 best UGC platforms

Loyoly

Loyoly is a unique UGC platform widely used by DNVB e-commerce brands.

It enables companies to collect quality and free of rights user-generated content across all marketing channels.

What sets Loyoly apart is that UGC is not limited to simple photos and videos. 

The platform enables brands to encourage their customers to interact on social media, publish posts, leave reviews and testimonials and much more. +30 missions are available.

All UGCs collected are then centralized in a library, allowing them to be filtered, sorted and exported.

Finally, a comprehensive dashboard helps you track UGC performance, view the profiles of the most active customers with great granularity, calculate the Earned Media Value generated and many more KPIs.

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Key features

• Personalization: The community page listing all the available missions is fully customizable to match the brand's identity.
• Product test: You can send exclusive product previews to a select group of customers to gather feedback and request UGC.
• Missions: +30 missions are available to encourage customers to generate all kinds of content. New ones are added regularly. 
• CRM: A CRM lists all customers who have created at least one piece of content, which you can sort and filter by number of missions, number of followers on social media, engagement rates and lots of other KPIs.
• Library: A library groups together all the content created since the start, which you can filter by type or social media and export for reuse as you wish.

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Pros and cons

✅ UGC creation missions can be integrated into the brand's loyalty program, so that customers can earn points and redeem them for rewards.

✅ Loyoly allows to generate customer reviews on all major platforms (Google, Facebook, Trustpilot...) and not only on your website like most of its competitors.

✅ Loyoly integrates with new platforms including TikTok (unlike some of the platforms on this list)

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Taggbox

Taggbox is one of the best-known tools for brands looking to boost trust, engagement and conversions through user-generated content (UGC). 

Taggbox offers a versatile and efficient solution for seamlessly collecting, curating, managing and displaying UGC across various marketing touchpoints.

Its user-friendly interface, free level and various integrations make it a versatile and effective choice for brands wishing to use UGC. 

While the analytics are informative, some users might wish for more in-depth tracking of interactions. 

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Key Features

• Display: Taggbox offers a range of display options for websites, events and display screens to showcase UGC in a captivating way.
• Analytics: With in-depth analytics, Taggbox helps you understand user behavior, sentiment analysis, active content creators and engagement metrics such as likes, clicks and views.
• Tag-based widget: This feature helps you categorize similar visuals to organize your UGC library.
• UGC Uploader: This feature lets you add QR codes or CTAs to any contact point to help generate UGC and reviews.
• Gamification: Brands can gamify their processes with leaderboards and countdowns, adding a touch of excitement.

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Pros and cons

✅ Taggbox has a user-friendly platform that doesn't require a steep learning curve.

✅ A free tier option allows you to start collecting your first UGCs, with no immediate investment required.

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❌ While Taggbox provides valuable analytics, some users may seek more advanced tracking options to gain deeper insights into user interactions.

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TINT

TINT is a flexible platform for corporate brands to find, curate and repurpose UGC. It does not, however, encourage content creation.

TINT remains an excellent choice for exploiting existing organic UGC, obtaining rights to content and promoting it seamlessly.

Its feature-rich interface, AI-powered UGC discovery and seamless integrations make it a well-known player on the market. 

However, its lack of a free plan and the pitfalls in terms of customer service pointed out by reviewers may be points to consider for some companies. 

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Key features

• Omnichannel campaigns: TINT enables brands to execute compelling UGC marketing campaigns across multiple channels, to leverage user-generated content throughout the customer journey.
• AI and Machine Learning: TINT's AI technology helps locate high-quality UGC that aligns perfectly with brand identity
• Integrations: With integrations such as HubSpot, Mailchimp, Shopify, Zapier, WooCommerce and Salesforce, TINT integrates with your existing marketing stack.
• Authorization: A feature automates the process of requesting content rights from customers, while detecting potential copyright issues
• Edition: An editor image to reuse UGC images in a variety of ways without leaving the platform

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Pros and cons

✅ TINT offers a wide range of features, making it a comprehensive and effective tool for managing UGC.

✅ TINT's machine learning technology optimizes content curation processes.

✅ With editing capabilities, brands can modify the UGC content they have permission to use in order to ensure that it aligns perfectly with their brand identity.

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❌ TINT does not provide features to encourage content creation.

❌ TINT does not offer a free tier, and some smaller brands may find the plans expensive.

❌ Some reviewers have raised concerns about customer service response times.

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Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice is an established customer engagement platform.

Nevertheless, it focuses more on customer reviews, although it does support other types of user-generated content (UGC) for brands. 

Its sampling function, technical support and brand-to-customer communication options make it an interesting choice for brands looking to boost customer engagement and generate UGC.

However, platform implementation requirements and occasional navigation issues may be considerations for some users. 

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Key features

• Sentiment analysis: One of Bazaarvoice's key features is its AI-based sentiment analysis, which classifies reviews into three categories: positive, negative or neutral. ‍
• UGC options: Bazaarvoice makes it easy to create, curate and display various forms of UGC, including reviews, ratings, Q&A, social and visual content.‍
• Sampling: Brands can launch product sampling campaigns before releasing new products, to ensure they reach the right audience and to receive authentic feedback.‍
• Influenster: Bazaarvoice boasts a community of individuals in 30 countries who actively contribute UGC to brand campaigns.‍
• Integration: The platform offers seamless integration tools to display customer reviews and ratings across multiple social media.

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Pros and cons

✅ Bazaarvoice's sampling function sets it apart from the competition (except Loyoly 😉 ).

✅ Bazaarvoice's technical support team is highly regarded for its responsiveness and expertise.

✅ Brands have the opportunity to answer customer reviews and questions

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❌ The implementation process can be demanding and time-consuming.

❌ Some users find that the user experience falls short of expectations, with tedious navigation.

❌ The UGC authorization tool can sometimes be inaccurate.

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Trend

What sets Trend apart from the other tools on this list is that it is not a platform for collecting, centralizing and reusing UGC.

Trend connects brands with their network of hand-picked content creators.

Trend's focus on influencer marketing and shoppable content on social media makes it an ideal choice for companies seeking high-quality UGC from "professional" creators.

The platform's e-commerce integrations and campaign management tools further enhance the content creation and distribution process.

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Key features

• Creator network: Trend boasts a substantial network of over 3,700 carefully selected content creators who collaborate with brands to produce high-quality content aligned with brand guidelines.
• Content templates: Trend offers brands customizable UGC templates to quickly create content tailored to their brand.
• Rights management: Trend ensures that brands have content rights for all creator-generated content
• Recommendation engine: Trend offers personalized shopping experiences thanks to an advanced AI-powered recommendation engine

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Pros and cons

✅ Trend specializes in the development of social media content tailored to the shopping experience.

✅ Their tool integrates seamlessly with leading e-commerce platforms such as Shopify and Magento

✅ Campaign management tools streamline communication and payment processes for creators

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❌ Brands pay for a limited amount of content, which can quickly become expensive if you want to use UGC over the long term.

❌ Their tool doesn't offer a dashboard to track the performance of the UGCs created.

❌ Trend only lets you create photos and videos, not encourage people to leave reviews, interact on networks, etc. (which are also forms of UGC).

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CrowdRiff

CrowdRiff stands out as a niche UGC platform catering exclusively to travel and tourism brands.

With its visual marketing tools, efficient content sourcing and content management features, CrowdRiff enables brands to create an engaging online presence and drive conversions. 

However, due to its niche and limited platform support, CrowdRiff may not be the best solution for brands outside the travel and tourism industry. 

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Key features

• Dashboard: CrowdRiff offers a unified dashboard that centralizes the management of all UGCs in one place.
• Asset management: AI-powered smart asset management tracks the performance of featured photos and videos, and automatically highlights the content that generates highest engagement.
• Content distribution: The platform enables easy distribution of UGC to social media, websites and marketing campaigns.
• Sourcing and permissions: CrowdRiff enables brands to source high-quality UGC and obtain sharing permissions.

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Pros and cons

✅ CrowdRiff is a UGC platform entirely dedicated to travel and tourism brands.

✅ Brands can measure overall performance and gain valuable analytics for optimizing their UGC strategies.

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❌ CrowdRiff is a UGC platform entirely dedicated to travel and tourism brands, and may not be perfectly suited to other industries.

❌ For the moment, CrowdRiff only supports Instagram, and not yet platforms like TikTok or YouTube.

❌ CrowdRiff only lets you create and curate photos and videos, not encourage people to leave reviews, interact on networks, etc. (which are also forms of UGC).

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Nosto

Nosto (formerly known as Stackla) identifies itself as a visual content engine.

It's a pretty comprehensive platform to help brands discover, manage and share UGC across various marketing touchpoints.

With its deep social media integration, influencer marketing platform and advanced AI technologies, Nosto enables brands to create compelling UGC experiences and build lasting connections with their audiences. 

Nevertheless, its feature-rich nature can make it more expensive for some brands.

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Key features

• Content discovery: Their discovery tool enables brands to source content from over 25 social media. 
• Influencer marketing: Nosto helps brands turn real customers into influencers
• Content recognition: Using advanced recognition technology, Nosto identifies key themes, trends and influencers within UGC campaigns to provide insights to brands.
• Predictive AI: Nosto leverages predictive AI to streamline the collection, organization and publication of content.
• Geolocation: Their geolocation tools enable brands to source UGC targeted at specific locations to enhance local marketing efforts.

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Pros and cons

✅ Nosto sources content from over 25 social media networks

✅ The platform's digital asset management ensures an organized and easily accessible UGC library

✅ Nosto targets e-commerce brands and offer features uniquely tailored to their needs

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❌ Extensive feature set can make it expensive

❌ Some reviews have pointed out that Nosto's user interface can seem confusing, potentially requiring a learning curve.

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Influencer Hero

Influencer Hero is an all-in-one influencer marketing & UGC platform. The system tracks influencers and automatically detects posts, notifying you and capturing the high quality file.

It will save all stories, reels and feed posts which can be accessed through a centralized content library.

Besides UGC, Influencer Hero provides all the other required tools to manage your influencer program end to end including influencer discovery, outreach, gifting, affiliate management and detailed reporting.

Their Ai-powered tools allow for hyper personalized communication and effective campaign management. 

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Key Features 

• Influencer Discovery: Use detailed filters such as location, audience demographics and lookalikes to quickly find relevant influencers for your brand 
• Influencer CRM: centralised CRM to manage influencers at scale
• Influencer Outreach: automated drip campaigns including Ai-powered personalisation
• Content & UGC Library: tracks influencers and auto saves all influencer and customer posts.
• Affiliate marketing: create affiliate links, discount codes and process payments

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Pros and cons

✅ Able to capture all influencer posts including: stories, reels and feed 

✅ Download high resolution file without the need to ask the influencer to upload 

✅ Offers all the tools needed with flexible pricing and monthly subscriptions  

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❌ Influencer Hero does not offer any free trials.

❌ The extensive features might require a learning curve.

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