User-generated content is cheap to ask for and easy to mishandle. A planned instagram ugc campaign decides in advance what you are asking people to make, how they send it, and — critically — how permission to reuse it is recorded.
Make the ask concrete
"Share your photos" produces almost nothing, because it gives people no idea what would be welcome or good. A specific ask — a particular moment, a particular setting, a particular question answered on camera — produces both more submissions and more usable ones.
Tell people plainly what happens to what they send. Contributors are far more willing when they know whether their material might be reposted, credited, or used elsewhere. Silence on this point reads as evasiveness, and the first person who feels misled will say so publicly.
Planning the campaign
- The ask: one sentence, specific enough to picture.
- The route: a tag, a mention, a hashtag, or direct message — choose one primary.
- Permission: how consent is captured and where it is stored.
- Credit: how contributors are named, and whether they can decline naming.
- Moderation: who reviews submissions and against what boundaries.
- Resurfacing: where accepted material appears and for how long.
- Wind-down: what happens to unused submissions at the end.
Store permission alongside the file itself, not in a separate thread. Consent that cannot be located later is functionally the same as consent you never obtained.
Moderation is part of the plan
Any open invitation attracts submissions you cannot use — off-topic, poor quality, or occasionally worse. Decide the boundaries before launch and give the moderator authority to apply them without escalating every case, otherwise moderation becomes a queue that nobody clears.
Be careful about implying that contributing brings a reward unless it genuinely does. Vague suggestions of features or prizes generate submissions and then resentment. If there is no reward, say the truth: contributions may be reshared with credit. Related handling sits in community management, and scheduling in the content calendar workflow.
Common questions
Is tagging the brand enough to imply permission?
Treat it as interest, not consent. Ask explicitly before reusing, and keep the reply.
Should submissions be edited?
Cropping for format is normally fine if agreed. Substantive edits change what the contributor said and should be checked with them first.
Can submissions be used in paid promotion?
Only with explicit permission covering that use. Consent to be reposted on a profile is not consent to appear in advertising, and treating them as equivalent is a common and avoidable mistake.
What if very few people submit?
Usually the ask was too broad or the audience too small for open calls. Approaching a handful of people directly tends to work better. See the FAQ.