UGC (user-generated content) campaigns are not only great at influencing sales. They also help to build a loyal community and drive engagement at minimal to no costs.

Considering 23 out of every 25 buyers also prefer UGC over polished Ads, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better way to market your product. However, there is one tiny drawback.

While UGC campaigns are highly effective in authentic endorsements, they carry significant risks to brand safety and reputation. This is especially true for businesses where consumer trust is slow to earn, such as DTC, health & wellness, technology, pets, etc.

One wrongfully presented UGC—let’s say promoting a cosmetic brand as “100% vegan” when it's not—and you’re stuck rebuilding the lost customer trust. This is where timely, preventative content moderation saves the day. It helps you protect your brand reputation by flagging and removing harmful content.

But this is only one of the many benefits, so let’s dive in to learn more.

Understanding UGC campaigns: What they are and how they differ from typical UGC

Before we dig deeper, let’s take a moment to address what a UGC campaign actually is. You’re probably familiar with user-generated content. It refers to any content created or generated by your users, such as product reviews, testimonials or unboxing videos. Have you seen any Instagram beauty creators unboxing and reviewing a product? Then you’ve seen UGC in action.

At Flockler, we’ve helped customers like the Worktop Express fuel business success with UGC.

They use Flockler to collect and display UGC. On their homepage, you will find a neatly-packed carousel of home projects customers share on Instagram. This not only provides social proof to convince potential customers but also improves the time spent on the website.

A UGC campaign, however, is slightly different. It is designed for a specific goal and executed over a specific period. To define, a UGC campaign is a marketing strategy that encourages and invites customers and the general public to create and share content related to your products and services, especially when there’s a new product launch.

Now, a UGC campaign can take many forms, including testimonials, hashtag contests, giveaways, product reviews, social media posts, and more. It can also be paid or organic. For example, you can send a PR package to a UGC creator or social media influencer to invite reviews and promotions. Rhode did the same when they launched Barrier Butter, a skin moisturizer, and shared the customer reviews in a carousel post.

This seems like a win-win situation at first.

You run a UGC campaign during a new product launch and invite reviews and product promotion for virtually free. Which is wonderful for your marketing dollars, but there are also some risks involved if the UGC isn’t moderated.

What are the Risks of Unmoderated UGC beyond obvious Brand Safety Risks?

With a UGC campaign, you’re opening doors for the wider public (not just customers who love your brand) to join the conversation. When that happens, the following risks follow:

1. You may accidentally violate copyright or privacy laws when sharing or reposting a UGC. This can happen if you fail to seek permission for use.
    

2. When bots or users with ill intent share inappropriate or harmful content. Even if you didn’t create the content, it can still make your brand look problematic by association.
    

3. Platforms like Amazon and Google Reviews are susceptible to fake and manipulated reviews. If you’re on platforms like these, you may occasionally get negative reviews intended to harm your brand reputation.
    

4. Customers may use derogatory speech to put down a competitor or use false information to promote your brand. Such fake claims can get your brand in trouble if not flagged on time.
    

5. There’s a higher chance of getting bombarded with spam, especially during a campaign. And if, say, your forum or community stays full of content unrelated to your product or brand, then your customers are less likely to engage and participate. It will leave a poor impression.

To mitigate such risks from growing bigger, preventative and reactive content moderation is of utmost importance. And particularly for:

• DTC or eCommerce brands trying to build awareness around new products

• Universities and colleges building social proof and spotlighting student experiences to drive enrollment

• Sports clubs and teams wanting to boost fan engagement

• NGOs and public sector organizations hoping to raise awareness and encourage public participation

• Agencies looking for ways to boost website engagement for clients

Let’s take a closer look below.

5 reasons why content moderation is important for user-generated campaigns

Here are five reasons to consider if you’re still wondering why content moderation is important for UGC campaigns.

#1 It prevents campaign hijacking

Negative campaign hijacking is a malicious practice where competitors or users deliberately use a branded hashtag or targeted keyword(s) to share negative content and damage your brand’s reputation. This is particularly true for UGC campaigns, such as hashtag contests or Q&A sessions.

Case in point: Coca-Cola’s #MakeItHappy campaign, which hoped to turn negative tweets into cute, positive graphics. A bot, @MeinCoke, hijacked the hashtag and quoted lines from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

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This may not seem problematic at first. But if the negative content grows in number, the campaign will lose its purpose, doing your brand more harm than good.

Fortunately, with timely content moderation, you can prevent such hijacking attempts even before they start. And preserve the original intent of the campaign.

#2 It prevents legal blunders

You have to be careful when aggregating UGC through reposts and Ads. This is because of the potential legal repercussions waiting to happen. Some of these include:

• Copyright Infringement: UGC creators own the right to the content they create, even if they’re advocating your brand. You must get their permission before using the UGC to avoid copyright violation.

• Privacy issues: Does the UGC contain sensitive information you may have overlooked? Perhaps you collect personal information through UGCs? Either way, you’ll be accountable under privacy laws like GDPR and CCPA.

• Offensive content: You don’t have any control over the content users create and share. But you can control which ones you aggregate. If you mistakenly republish offensive UGC on any third-party platform (e.g., Instagram), you will not only end up violating their T&Cs but ruin your reputation as well. This makes content moderation a vital step when aggregating UGC.

• False advertising: UGC with inaccurate information or misrepresenting the product is deemed misinformation. It not only hurts your brand reputation but may even lead to hate and harassment from consumers who bought into the misinformation.

The best way to avoid such legal challenges? A combination of robust content moderation, consumer education, and technology like a UGC platform. Plus, presenting a comprehensive set of terms and conditions is always the best way to go.

Exhibit A: Disney’s terms of use for user-generated content.

#3 It weeds out irrelevant and inappropriate content

With UGC campaigns, you’re bound to get spammy, irrelevant, inappropriate, and harmful content—along with relevant, high-quality ones.

This is especially true for hashtag campaigns and social media contests, as some users may not follow the guidelines well.

In such a case, you can flag the UGC early on. You can eliminate “inappropriate” content swiftly and orchestrate the brand experience you want, fostering a healthy, brand-safe environment for users to participate and engage with enthusiasm.

#4 It helps in brand monitoring

UGC moderation isn’t solely about removing unwanted content. It can also help you monitor your signal-to-noise ratio (STNR), which is the ratio of relevant, on-topic content to irrelevant, spammy content associated with your UGC campaign.

It is a great way to monitor brand mentions, identify consumer trends, and how the public perceives your brand and products. This also matters from a marketing point of view. With proper moderation, you can find the most relevant and persuasive UGC to aggregate and push forward. It will help you provide social proof more authentically.

For example, press mentions are one of the most effective forms of UGC, especially if they come unsolicited.

reMarkable, a writing tablet, turned a Forbes review into social proof for email when promoting its reMarkable 2 product launch.

Without UGC moderation, it’s easy to miss out on such mentions.

#5 It gives insights into what customers want

UGC campaigns are effective in attracting more than just authentic reviews and product promotions. If you’re moderating UGC, you can also gain insight into customer wants and desires and identify opportunities to improve promotion efforts, boost engagement or simply understand what your customers want.

Take Warby Parker, for example. Their campaign with Emma Chamberlain, an American media personality, was overall a huge hit. But the audience loved one frame in particular: Lonnie in Oxblood.

Seeing how much the customers were requesting a restock, they capitalized on the demand to organize a giveaway, inviting participation and boosting engagement in the process.

But how does content moderation work for UGC? Let’s unpack.

How to moderate user-generated content? Two ways to safeguard your UGC campaigns

There are broadly two ways to monitor and moderate UGC campaigns: Manually with human moderators and through AI content moderation using a tool with automated filters and natural language processing.

However, you can combine both methods for added brand safety. Your AI content moderator tool will parse, filter, and flag the UGC based on your brand guidelines. Meanwhile, human moderators can decide which flagged content to remove and keep.

4 Best Practices to Moderate UGC Campaigns

You must begin with regulatory requirements, ethical standards, and guideline creation to effectively moderate user-generated content. Here are four best practices you can’t go wrong with.

1. Provide clear guidelines to users

Before launching your UGC campaign, craft a set of guidelines to define your values and ethical standards. It should convey the dos and don’ts of submitting content in a clear, concise, and comprehensive manner.

Here are a few things to cover in the guidelines.

• What type of content is and isn’t acceptable

• How will the rules be enforced

• How will the content be flagged

• What will be the penalty for violations

Make sure the guidelines are easily accessible. And more importantly, keep your user guidelines front and center, even for small campaigns. So users are informed well in time. Here’s how Disney+ shared their guidelines for their hashtag campaign.

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You should also keep updating your guidelines and policies to maintain effective moderation practices.

2. Always check for compliance

Always check for compliance with copyright and privacy laws when aggregating or using UGC for promotional activity. If you’re running the campaign on a specific platform like X (formerly Twitter), you will also need to comply with platform-specific guidelines.

For example, X (formerly Twitter) has a clear and comprehensive policy for how users can share and engage content to maintain a safe environment.

If you notice any user-generated content failing to comply with the required regulations or platform-specific policies, make sure to take action immediately.

Depending on the degree of violation, you can also directly remove the content (if it’s your platform). Just inform the user why their content was removed to maintain transparency.

3. Define your moderation workflow

Your UGC moderation workflow will differ based on the campaign.

For example, if you’re asking users to share content on TikTok for a hashtag contest, you won’t have much control over how the hashtag is used. In such a case, you will have to perform reactive moderation and report harmful UGC to the platform.

On the other hand, if you’re asking users to submit the content via a form, you can monitor and moderate the content to see if it’s compliant. This gives you control over which content to share and which to remove.

Besides the UGC submission process, take care of who will do the moderating, who will decide what to do with the flagged content, how the creator will be informed, and how the chosen UGC will be republished. It should all be documented for easy understanding.

You need to get down to the nitty-gritty to get UGC moderation right.

4. Use a content moderation tool

Manual moderation works well if you’re dealing with less than 100 posts per day. However, once the number of posts exceeds 100, you need to bring AI technology for help.

AI content moderation tools can automate the process of filtering, flagging, and removing inappropriate content, including spam, private data, defamatory posts, disturbing visuals, explicit content, and more.

One such tool is Flockler’s Garde AI.

Zero-click UGC moderation with Garde AI

Garde AI is an AI-powered moderation tool inside Flockler. It helps you automate flagging, hiding, and removing inappropriate and irrelevant content, ensuring only the most relevant and helpful UGC makes the cut.

It saves you business hours, ensures content relevance, provides moderation reports, and promotes a healthy environment for the users.

• You can access Garde AI to start moderating if you’re using Flockler’s Business, Pro, or Premium plans. However, users with a lower plan will need to upgrade to use the tool.

• But if you’re interested in getting a plan, Flockler offers a limited number of Content Moderation credits with a 14-day free trial.

Sign up to take Garde AI for a spin now.