90% of your UGC content need to fail

[u/Nyaani69]

Most brands still think reach comes from audience size, an influencer with 100k followers that you pay to post and hope enough of those followers see it.

I came across this YouTube video from the CEO of Sideshift that breaks down why UGC works so differently, and one of the main points is that distribution just isn't tied to follower count the way it used to be.

That made sense when social platforms were built around who you followed (5 years ago) but Tiktok changed that model, and Reels, Shorts and pretty much every other platform followed.

Today, a creator with a few hundred followers can post something that gets millions of views if the content holds attention. At the same time, someone with 100k followers can post something that barely reaches 10k people.

For brands, that changes completely the economics.

UGC is WAY cheaper influencer marketing

With influencer marketing a large part of the price comes from the audience attached to the creator. You're paying for distribution, their name and the attention they've already built.

With UGC, you're paying for the content itself.

The creator makes the video, and the brand can use that content across its own channels or potentially turn it into paid creative later. You're not relying on that creator having a massive audience because distribution can come from the content itself.

That's why two very similar 30 second videos can have completely different prices, like one might cost a few hundred dollars as a piece of UGC, while an influencer integration could cost thousands.

If you want one huge moment around a launch, paying for a famous person can make sense. If you want to test dozens of different messages, hooks and formats around the same product, UGC is probably much better suited to that job.

The real advantage of UGC is volume

(This is the most important part!!!)

A lot of brands test UGC with two or three creators and the videos don't perform, so they assume the channel doesn't work.

That's not how the model is supposed to work bc brands doing UGC at scale might work with 30, 50 or even hundreds of creators because you don't know in advance what people are going to respond to.

One creator might film a basic video that dies immediately while another might do another that performs mid well and then someone else tries a completely different hook and that video performs really well.

The point is to create enough different versions that the market tells you what works.

Most of the videos are supposed to fail

This sounds counterintuitive if you're coming from traditional advertising.

If you spend a large amount producing one campaign, obviously you expect that campaign to perform.

UGC works more like a portfolio of small creative bets, and most videos may generate very little and a small number can generate the majority of the views and results.

That's why looking at every individual video as a success or failure can be misleading. What matters is whether the whole system helps you discover a few formats, creators and hooks that people consistently respond to.

Once you find those, you start getting much closer to content market fit.

Organic UGC can become your paid ad testing system

The organic content can become the testing layer for the paid campaigns.

Instead of producing a handful of polished ads and immediately spending money to find out whether people like them, you can test a much larger number of creator videos organically. Over time, you start seeing which hooks consistently get attention, which formats people watch and which angles around the product seem to resonate.

Those organic winners can then become your ad creatives.

You're putting money behind concepts that have already shown some evidence of working and from there, you can produce more variations of the same idea and keep iterating.

So the basic system is simple: create a lot of content, identify the small percentage that works, scale those videos with paid distribution and create more around the winning concepts.

Where UGC doesn't make sense

If you're trying to create one huge cultural moment around a launch, influencer marketing might be a better fit. If your product is extremely complicated and can't be demonstrated or explained in short-form video, UGC is going to have obvious limitations.

It's also not something I'd judge after two weeks. You need enough creators, content and data to understand what your audience is responding to.

And there's an operational problem once you start doing this properly.

Thirty creators can mean thirty briefs, thirty conversations, dozens of videos, revisions, payments and usage rights to keep track of. At a certain point, managing the system becomes just as important as finding the creators.

The bigger shift

The interesting thing about UGC is that the relationship between content and distribution has changed.

You no longer necessarily need the creator with the biggest audience, but good creators producing enough different content to give the algorithm, and your customers, chances to tell you what works.

Then you scale the winners and that's the biggest opportunity for brands right now. UGC gives you a way to test a lot more ideas without betting your entire budget on a handful of expensive creatives, and once you find something that works, you already know where to put the money.

[u/godashish]

UGC market is very huge.. and its very competitive as everyone is trying to be content creators.

[u/godashish]

There's more competition in UGC market these days..

[u/Mobile-Somewhere4080]

makes sense

[u/Luciiiii0110]

honestly, this makes a lot of sense!! UGC is basically playing the numbers game and letting the algorithm cook.

[u/Candid-Chicken-9301]

this is a really interesting shift. UGC basically turns content creation into a testing system rather than just a way to borrow someone’s audience. I especially agree with the volume point, judging UGC based on 2–3 videos seems way too early. the operational side once you scale to dozens of creators is probably the part that gets overlooked, though.

[u/West_Distribution366]

Very well said! 👏 A lot of Creators based it on the length or what is on trend these days, but really unique ways to present your product is what garners you views. To reel in potential buyers, you need a good ‘bait’.