WHY I WON'T DO UGC AGAIN

Keli H the author on the set of a TV show to talk about her author journey

The aim is not to name any brands in this very honest confessional around sponsored content and why I won't do it again. Unless, of course, I get that brand ambassadorship from Mont Blanc I'm manifesting - that, I would accept without a second's hesitation. But my distrust around doing UGC (user generated content) again is about more than the specific brands that were involved in my experience. I have no doubt it's the same anywhere in the influencer industry. 

If you've been on the periphery of influencer content, and not sure how it all works, here's a small explanation. Companies have products with specific target markets. The easiest way to get exposure to those target markets is to find people on social media (termed 'content creators') with large followings from that specific target market. If those content creators are featuring and promoting these products to their followings, they can influence their buying decision, effectively allowing companies to reach their target market easily. This is where the term 'influencer' comes in. 

This process is called 'user generated content' because it is actual users creating media around the product, instead of traditional brand advertising. 

So companies contract influencer agencies to do the task of sourcing appropriate content creators for their products. The influencer agencies are responsible for finding the right influencer, getting the product to them, and making sure they actually post about it - called a campaign, because they bring on board a lot of influencers to do it at the same time, which effectively floods social media with the product the influencers are promoting. The influencer agency does this by making the content creator sign a 'trade exchange agreement'. This agreement essentially states that the agency is going to send you a product for free, and in return they expect a certain number of social media posts from you. There will also be any other rules they expect you to follow. 

Here's my story. So almost a month ago I was contacted by an influencer agency after submitting an application form to review a product. I post a lot of fashion and beauty content, so I was a good fit to review a set of cosmetic products. The initial contact from the agency noted that it would be in exchange for me posting 2 Tik Tok videos where I honestly review the products. Simple enough, I figured, plus the product was from a cosmetics brand I actually regularly use anyway, so I already trusted it enough to promote to my followers. 

Sadly, I didn't enjoy the UGC experience (though I liked the product) and likely won't do it again. Here's why:

1. CREATING FREE ADVERTS FOR THE BRAND 

I completely get that this particular reason might be a little biased because I'm the owner of a publishing house, and I'm not used to taking instructions from other people. But I personally felt very 'talked at' the duration of the influencer campaign, which was about 3 weeks. The whole thing was very instructional. There were instructions on what to wear, daily reminders to post the video - as if there was expectation of a dishonest agreement from my side, what they wanted in each frame of the video, how the captions should look. 

As a business owner, I realized what all the instructions really meant... they were guiding us to create advertorial style content for the brand.

 One of the terms in the trade exchange agreement was that they are allowed to use our video to promote on Tik Tok. If you're unfamiliar with that term, it basically means to run your video as an advert on Tik Tok. So without payment or compensation, the influencers had created adverts that the brand used. Of course, most influencers don't care because it could be framed as an 'opportunity' to have your content used as an advert. As a business owner, I understand my creative rights a little more so I didn't like this. 

2. DELIVERABLES KEPT CHANGING 

You'll have to forgive my continued use of business jargon here. But understanding UGC from a business perspective has given me much better clarity on why I felt queasy about the whole thing afterwards. So 'deliverables' are essentially tasks that are owed to the customer. In this case, tasks that we had to complete for the influencer agency. 

As mentioned, the deliverable when I was contacted was that I needed to create 2 Tik Tok posts honestly reviewing the product. This was also in the trade exchange agreement, alongside a request not to do UGC for competing products at the same time . That was fair enough. 

When the product was sent, I received it with a letter that now included additions to the deliverables, not previously mentioned. Things like the length of the videos, the style of the content, what each video was supposed to contain (by the way, it was no longer just my review). All of that was minor, though a surprise. A couple of days later we were sent (via WhatsApp) certain music that was compulsory to include in the videos. It continued. Days after that, I was told I needed to post my videos to Instagram and Facebook - the trade exchange agreement I had signed was for 2 Tik Tok posts only. Honestly, I drew the line at punting this product to my friends and family on Facebook - they are not people who signed up to see my fashion and beauty promos. There's more - we were given links to purchase the product online, that we were told was compulsory to add to our social media bios. I wouldn't have agreed to this campaign if they had been transparent about this - I was not putting a link to buy cosmetics next to my business website link on my social media! 

So by the end, I felt quite deceived. I had joined on the premise of doing something simple as my part of the exchange, but once I was in, it became a constant game of changing goal posts every time they added on more deliverables that I hadn't been expecting. 

To their credit, all of this is probably normal in the world of UGC. I just hope this post is enlightening and informative to someone who wants to try influencing in the future, and you'll know what to expect. 

3. SCRIPTED/PROMPTED WORDING 

Of all the things I didn't enjoy about the UGC experience, this is probably the one I didn't enjoy the most. 

There was regular encouragement to use certain words and phrases to describe the product or how well it worked. The idea of an 'honest review' was slowly edged out by the careful introduction of buzzwords and keywords. 

There also wasn't any focus on transparency with our audience that this was part of an influencer campaign. We were told that the most we could do is use a secondary hashtag (#gifted should not be one of the main hashtags in the caption, nor could this be labeled as sponsored or branded content). There are probably legitimate business reasons for not labeling certain content as sponsored or branded, but to be subtly guided away from noting that the product was sent to us for free in exchange for videos that the agency decided the formatting and wording of... That felt disingenuous to me. 

Ultimately, the products I had recieved were really very good. This is something I would 100% buy again. While my positive sentiments about the product are true, I can't help but discard influencer content now, when I scroll social media, because I know the words are not their own. It might be a good product and they might genuinely feel positive about it, but there isn't a way for me to know that they mean it or they were told to say it. 

4. CAN'T DELETE MY SOCIAL MEDIA

Look, this one I can't hold the influencer agency responsible for. As part of the trade exchange agreement, we signed that we would not delete Tik Tok for a month after the campaign is over. Again, from a business perspective, this makes absolute sense. Why give the product to content creators whose reviews are simply going to disappear the next day, and no one will really see it anyway.

I've personally been grappling with the urge to delete my social media since February. At the moment I'm leaning more towards doing it. But I've got about a week and half left before I am officially allowed to do that if I want to honour my side of the trade exchange agreement (and I do want to honour it.) The onus of the frustration is on me because I shouldn't have signed this agreement and participated in the campaign if I wanted to delete my socials. But hopefully this little piece of insight will be helpful to anyone else who wants to try UGC in the future.

I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to try UGC - I wanted to; after all I filled out that application form to review the product in the first place. It simply wasn't what I was expecting so this post isn't to dissuade anyone else from doing it. I aim to provide honest insight and thoughts on the world of influencing for those who will try it after me. I personally don't think I will do influencing in this manner again - but I do believe in ambassadorships and brand faces, because there's a greater trust factor for me. So it looks like I've learnt something about myself at the end of it all - I'm a traditional media type of person and make buying decisions the old school way... seeing ambassadors at events, adverts in print, trusted names alongside the items, little tester samples... 

For more articles written by Keli H, the author, visit this blog's home page on keli-h.com

 

Keli H is the award winning author of the 400 series, which includes The Four Hundred Club and Splitting an Empire. The 400 series is high brow contemporary fiction revolving around the lives of wealthy circles. Keli's other works include Creating Literary Art. She is also the founder of The KREST House, a storytelling empire.