How to Become a UGC Content Creator Step-by-Step

U GC content is all the rage in the freelancing world right now. And I'm actually super excited about it because user generated content or U GC content is actually the majority of the business that my marketing firm gets and has gotten over the past couple of years. So I've been making money this way for several years.

It's definitely not a new concept, but I think that short form vertical video platforms like TikTok and Instagram reels have really breathed new life into it. So I wanna. All the details of what exactly UGC content is, who would make a good U GC content creator, and how to get started step by step.

So, first off, what is UGC content? So UGC stands for user generated content back in the day in the early, early days of social media, this meant organic content that users actual customers were posting. Just naturally out of the blue.

So let's pretend that I'm the social media manager for Nike. Well, I'm gonna look at people who have tagged me in Instagram posts and other social media posts. If I see high quality photos or things, you know, testimonials, tweets, anything like that, that I want to use in my marketing materials.

I'm gonna reach out to that customer and ask them if I can use that in our marketing. So that's the original kind. Meaning of UGC content, but over the years, it's evolved a little bit and brands are catching on to the fact that people really like these testimonial style videos, these DIY cell phone style videos, and they're actually investing in creating this stuff themselves.

So it's not quite as organic. It. Paid for by the brand and owned by the brand and creators like maybe yourself, like maybe myself are the ones who are actually.

Making this content and selling it to the brand. So who makes a good UGC content creator? Well, you know, anybody who's comfortable being on camera, anyone who's comfortable and really likes creating content can make U GC content.

You know, I think that there's a misconception that in order to be a UGC content creator, you have to be like a model or, you know, you have to be an influencer or something like that. And the truth. One of the big appeals of U GC content is that they're just normal people creating this content.

If you are a mom of four, you are probably going to take advice or look to other moms in your similar income bracket and age bracket over like some celebrity. You know, we kind of know that those are paid for, we don't really relate to those people. They have a completely different lifestyle as us.

So, you know, you don't have to be perfect or anything like that to be a UGC creator, but you do have to be comfortable to be a. On camera. So keep that in mind.

No, there is definitely faceless U GC content. I'm sure you sometimes will see unboxing videos and things like that. But I would say nine times out of 10, you're gonna want to be comfortable on camera, perhaps comfortable actually speaking on camera and of.

Course comfortable creating content by content. That can mean anything from photos to videos, and that could be long form content, short form content. The majority of the UGC content that I've done is just like this it's actually YouTube videos.

But again, now that TikTok is more of a thing for brands. That is a huge, huge demand. So if you like creating.

Keep on watching. Okay. So the first thing that you're gonna need to do, if you wanna be a U GC content creator is build a portfolio.

A portfolio is going to be a showcase of the work that you've created. That is hopefully similar to whatever job it is that you're applying to or whatever company it is that you're pitching to. So within that, before you even get started with that, it's probably a wise idea to list out what topics or what types of content you are comfortable.

Knowledgeable about creating. So for example, me and my business, the types of companies that I've generally worked with have been like software companies, tech companies. So I have to be really knowledgeable about trends that are going on in that space.

I have to be able to speak to those things. I have to be able to know how to teach and do screen shares and tutorials and things like that. So that's a lot of my portfolio, but if you wanted to work with, let's say beauty products, You need to have beauty products in your portfolio because they're not gonna wanna hire me.

If I just show them a portfolio of a bunch of tech products, like that's pretty boring and unrelated. So my advice for building a portfolio is to just start with whatever you already have. So.

For me, maybe that is just doing tutorials on tools that I use every single day, like Asana, like final cut pro. I might just create some quick snappy tutorials to post them on TikTok or to post them on YouTube. So I start building up that experience.

If you were doing the beauty product thing, look through your makeup drawer and. Pull out some products and create some cool content around that. Now there's two ways that you can go about this.

You can do what I just said and post these things publicly and actually start a YouTube channel, start a TikTok account, whatever that may be. So you actually start to get real eyes, real engagement, all of that kind of thing on your content. Or you can just create it and keep it kind of private and just post it in a portfolio.

A lot of people ask, what exactly is a portfolio? Is it a website? Is it a document?

Like, what is it? And you can just create a simple presentation in a tool like Canva showcasing a couple of your favorite pieces of content that you've created. Linking over to it.

This is really important. Make sure to hyperlink so that people can click over and see it. If you have it public on a public TikTok, a public YouTube, then that's really easy to do.

But if you're keeping your content private, you can use a Google drive folder and just get a shareable link and link over to that. That way. That's a really easy way to build out your portfolio.

Now there's kind of another group of people who could probably benefit from UGC content. Influencers, you know, existing content creators who are just looking to make a little bit of extra money. That was kind of the area that I sort of fell into when I got into UGC content at first, because I was already creating content here on my YouTube channel.

So most of my first UGC clients saw those videos said, Hey, she knows what she's talking about. We like her on camera presence. And they reached out and asked me to be sort of the face of their brand.

So if that is you as well, create a portfolio with some of your top performing. Posts featuring products, maybe they're sponsored. Maybe they're not, but just pull some of that stuff together that is both creative and also really highly engaged with the thing.

If you do keep a private portfolio is you're not gonna have any data to speak to. So this might be a hindrance when it comes to this selling part. Keep that in mind.

It isn't a bad idea to just start testing things organically. You can just create a separate. It might not need to be under your own personal account and things like that, because it is gonna help you to be able to say, Hey, this post that I made got, you know, a hundred thousand impressions or this sponsor that I worked with said that they saw 50,000 link clicks from this sponsored video.

Those things will help you showcase your results. And get more people to want to hire you. Whew.

Okay. So after you create your portfolio, you're gonna need to start looking for clients. How in the world you get clients I've already spoken to this a little bit.

There's really two different ways that you can go about this. You can take an inbound approach, which means that you are posting content maybe as an influencer creator, maybe just as a UGC creator, online, whatever you're posting things. And you're kind of waiting for brands to see your content and.

This is the kind of stuff that we're looking for. They'll reach out to you via an email or a link in your bio. They'll reach out somehow and that's how you'll get started.

So that's one approach, and I think that's best if you are already a creator and you're just kind of looking to make some additional income, however, you might want to take an outbound. More active approach to getting clients. If you are like, I wanna do this full time, I'm trying to quit my job.

I'm starting, you know, from scratch. Really. I don't have an existing social presence, then you're gonna need to be a little bit more aggressive in your client getting process, I suppose.

So I'll first speak to inbound quickly. Keep doing what you're doing, but make sure that you're using brand tags in your post, you know, tag the brands. If you're posting anything, also use their hashtags.

You may notice that some brands actually have specific hashtags that they monitor. And if they ask you if they reach out and ask, Hey, is it okay to repost? That's a great opportunity to say, Hey, my reposts do come with a fee.

I'd be happy to talk about creating some original branded content or U GC content for you. And that can kind of get the conversation started if you are an influencer and you're already getting influencer marketing contracts or so. Sponsorships for YouTube, for your Instagram, for TikTok, whatever.

It's also a great idea to upsell for UGC content at the end of that conversation. So if they say, Hey, can you post one YouTube video with a mention in it? I might say, absolutely.

Do you want some separate 32nd pieces of content that you can use for YouTube ads? Or do you want a TikTok ready short form piece that I can give you that you can post? Own account.

And then I will just give them a cost for that to add on to the package. So it can be a really great way to upsell same thing for my social media managers out there. If you are already, you know, building out the editorial calendar and you're already posting the content, it can be a great way to just add some additional.

Money onto your contract by actually creating the content for them. So if they're gonna, you know, budget for a photographer to go out to shoot their bikinis or whatever it is they sell, maybe you can just offer to do an unboxing video for them to build out that content calendar. And again, just price that out.

In a package or by video or by piece of content. So you can sort of upsell that way. Now, if we're talking outbound and you're just kind of starting from scratch, a great place to start is Upwork.

Upwork is where I got my very first freelance client really ever. And if you go on there and you just start searching for these terms, U GC user generated content, content creator. Branded content, content creation, social media, content, search, all of those different terms.

It's not all gonna fall under UGC. So keep that in mind, just do your due diligence in searching. And there is a lot of bad with Upwork, but there is also a lot of good.

You do have to do a little bit of digging. You do have to customize your pitches. You do need to, you know, attach a portfolio that has high quality work to get those high quality gigs, but they are out there.

And listen, you may need to sort of start from the bottom. I'm not saying that you should work for a very, very low rate, you know, forever, but get a couple of clients under your belt. Get them to give you a good review on Upwork, and it's gonna make that process.

Easier and easier as you start building your portfolio, building your testimonials, it's just gonna make it easier for you to get high quality gigs moving forward. Now, another thing that you can do is just reach out to brands that you like. And I recommend starting with brands that you can really like evangelize for brands that you truly love already.

Like I know that I just love this brand buck, some cosmetic. I recommend their lip glosses to everybody. They're amazing.

They're like my go-to filming lip gloss. That would be one of the first brands that I would reach out to if I wanted to make content, because I already have a lot of their products. I already love them.

I already have, you know, basically testimonials of people saying, Hey, about this lip gloss because you recommended it to me. So I sort of have those stories to tell and can easily create those pieces of content, but how do you actually reach the right person? So you can try just DMing the brand.

Somewhere to start. Your success rate of that is gonna be pretty hit or miss, because the thing is sometimes it's just going to go into like a support inbox of social media managers who don't really care or even worse. They might delete it because you're kind of coming after their job to some extent.

But if the brand that you wanna work with is really small and you know that it is the owner. Or the manager themselves managing the social media, then social media inboxes can work and again, tagging the brand as well can get their attention. So if you're thinking of like indie cosmetics brands, for example, brand new startups in the tech space that are, you know, have one or two employees, things like that.

That can be a good place to start is just DMing the brand. But I really recommend reaching out via email or at least taking a multi-prong approach. If you will, you can kind of reach out to them in several different ways to have your pitches actually land somewhere.

So cold emails can go really, really well, or they can go really, really bad. And most of the times they go. Poorly because people just don't pay attention to details.

I'm gonna be honest with you. I get so many cold emails in my inbox, and so many of them are just desperate and annoying and rude and full of grammar mistakes. So you wanna make sure that you.

Are complimentary to the brand, give them a compliment. Don't just insult them. You wanna make sure that you run your cold email through spell check and maybe through Grammarly is one of my favorite browser extensions to make sure I'm, you know, writing correctly.

You also wanna make sure that you are contacting the right person. So again, let's pretend that I'm gonna reach out to buck some cosmetics. One thing that I love to do is go to their LinkedIn page.

I go to the people tab and I start typing in, um, marketing. Maybe I might be looking for a marketing manager or a VP of marketing or a chief marketing officer, or maybe I'll look for this social media manager, any people who are in charge of the editorial calendar and what goes out on social media involved in content marketing, that's gonna be who I want to reach out. So let's say that I find a person, her name is Jane DOE.

I'm gonna click on her profile and then I'm going try to gather contact information. If I can find it. Sometimes they have it available on their LinkedIn.

There are also tools out there like snow. io that enable you to. Pull that data and get an email address for the correct person.

Now, if you can't find it through research or through any of these tools, you can, of course, just email like contact buck, some cosmetics. com, but usually it's gonna be a lot harder to get to the right person by using those generalized emails. So definitely do your due diligence, do your research and try to find the right person to reach out.

I actually just hosted a free master class all about pitching and selling your services. So if you're interested in checking it out, it is a totally free class. I'll link it down in the description box and in the show notes.

So you can watch. all right. So you are in contact with the person they are showing interest in your portfolio.

Now what? Well, you'll probably wanna get them onto a discovery call to understand their needs, to understand what type of content they're looking for to understand, you know, the vision that they're. Looking for the look and feel that they want.

So I just like to send over a scheduling link to make things really easy. Once we're, at that point, you can use a tool like acuity. You can use my favorite, which is honey book.

I will have a link in the resources for you. Hop on a call with them, start to understand the project needs. Start to understand the brand.

I actually have a full video, all about hosting discovery calls. So I will link that if you wanna check that out for more details, once they agree to work with you, based on the conversation in your discovery call, you're gonna want to send over a proposal. Now you may know that I also do full service, social media management.

And those proposals tend to be a lot more detailed than they would be for a U GC content project in most cases, unless it is like a very long term agreement where it's gonna have a lot of variables and a lot of different pieces of content. But if somebody's just saying, Hey, I need a batch of five talks. It might just be a simple one page document that kind of explains the overall look and feel.

The overall concept and editorial decisions that I'm gonna be making. So it's not gonna be super, super robust. I think in most cases, especially for short form content, these processes actually move like really, really quickly.

So you probably don't need to build out a 10 page proposal. Like you may, if you're gonna be hired to do somebody's social media for a year, if they agree to your. And your ideas, then you can move forward.

And this is something I really want all of my new creators out there to please, please do. I know this is something that a lot of people are kind of first dipping their toes in to freelancing. So maybe you have never dealt with contracts or invoices, but please don't skip this step.

Writing out a contract is going to protect you. It's gonna protect the brand. It's just gonna make the relationship go much, much smoother.

So make sure that in your contract, you have the. Listed, you know how much you're actually gonna get paid, that you have details on how you're gonna get paid. Are you going to be getting paid before the project kicks off?

Are you gonna get paid at the end when the deliverables are actually sent over, that's really up to you. But I personally always push for getting paid upfront or at least getting a deposit. 50% at signing and 50%, once the deliverables are sent over, make sure that your contract also has all of your deadlines in there so that you are being really clear about when you're gonna send things over as well as how many rounds of revisions are going to be accepted.

You don't wanna be rerecording a TikTok. 10 times for, you know, $500 or whatever budget it is that you are proposing. You wanna make sure that you are limiting those revisions.

And also, you know, that you're just getting really clear on that discovery call and at the beginning of the relationship on what they want to hopefully minimize the number of revisions and edits that you need to make. I'm not a lawyer. So I cannot give you a contract template that is not allowed.

But there are plenty of lawyers out there who specialize in social media and content creation, hiring a lawyer actually doesn't cost as much as you would think it is for them to get you a contract template that you can reuse for your different clients. And I also really love honey book, which has some contract templates in there. Again, I will leave a link to honey book down below that actually gets you a trial for $1 a month for the first eight months.

It is a really amazing deal. So be sure to check that out. If you want access to those contract templates and you can also invoice through honey book.

So this is where you will set up your payment schedule. If you're gonna get paid again, that 50, 50 split, if you're gonna get paid up front or if you're gonna get paid once the project is actually delivered, but it just really makes things. Go a lot smoother.

It gives you a much more professional look. You're not having to like send everything over via email and Google drive and things like that. So I highly recommend really upping your game with a tool like honey book for contracts and invoices.

And then lastly, you're going to deliver the content. So you can do this a lot of different ways. You can just send this over via email.

If it's just like one or two talks, you can use Google drive as something that I've used for years and years, but a tool that I really. Especially for longer form content or lots of content or content that is very detailed is a tool called frame frame enables you to upload your project. And then the client can actually like click on different timestamps and add comments.

If they're like, Hey, can we actually just like change this one word or whatever that makes it really easy to communicate those revisions and those changes back and forth. Now when it comes to the actual video files, like if you're. YouTube content, for example, you can just upload that right to frame.

That process is pretty simple, but I know for TikTok and Instagram reels, it can be a little bit more involved because there are all of those elements that you've created using the editor in TikTok or Instagram. So what I like to do is just screen record. I'll preview the, uh, piece of content in question and I'll screen record and send that to myself via airdrop and then upload it.

Frame, of course saving it as a draft. If I do need to make any changes and then to actually get them the content, let's say that they then approve your TikTok. A little hack that I've figured out for myself is just using a separate account.

So let's say it's U GC Latasha on TikTok, and I will really quickly post the actual TikTok download. Remove the watermark using a tool like snap tick, and then delete the TikTok and send them over that watermark free files so that they can upload it on their own account. So that's it.

Those are the basic steps to getting started with U GC content. There is a lot more that we can get into I'm. Sure.

So if you have any questions, please leave them in the comments. If you're watching on YouTube, I'm happy to make a part two or go in more detail about any. Things.

I also encourage you if you're new to the channel to check out some of my other resources, a lot of them are geared specifically towards social media managers, but many of the steps are very, very similar. You know, how to host a discovery, call, how to invoice, how to analyze your success, looking at numbers and KPIs and reporting. And all of that is very, very similar.

So be sure to check those out. I'll. Some other resources for you in the description and in the show notes as well.

And I thank you as always for hanging out with me. I hope you have an amazing rest of your week and I'll talk to you in my next one.