Should you remove UGC from your brand’s social strategy?

This morning, Instagram announced changes coming to your feed and accounts, and while they favor creators they absolutely will make a difference in your brand or business strategy.

What did they announce?

User-Generated Content will rank lower in the feeds

This is something photographers and creators have been calling for, for a very long time. Thanks to annoying aggregator accounts, it’s absolutely necessary to keep the platform fun and make creators feel valued - but what does it mean for brands?

From our perspective - brands who have UGC as part of their feed strategy, and are spending money through influencer marketing to get quality user-generated content, may see a big drop in reach and engagement on those posts. We plan to wait another month before we see if the reach drops as severely as it could. If reach does drop on the feed, our strategies will move to story shares only.

Everyone on Instagram will be able to tag your products

Product tags have been available for a long time for brands and businesses, but now EVERYONE will be able to tag your products on their feed posts. This sounds amazing, but unless you encourage it we have a hard time believing people will just tag your products in their posts.

How do you encourage it?

We highly recommend something that starts a conversation with that user - so slide into their DMs and offer them a discount on their next purchase! If you have an offer you physically send to people who buy your product, this would be a great place to also use that touchpoint.

Not sure how these changes will affect your own Instagram account? If all of this sounds overwhelming, reach out to us! We’d love to help you take your Instagram strategy to the next level.