7 Tips for Generating UGC: The Lifeblood of Customer Engagement Strategies

If you're running a store on Shopify, you've probably dreamed of launching an "ambassador program" or "customer-involved product development" at least once.

For customer engagement initiatives like these to work, having UGC (User-Generated Content) already flowing is an absolute prerequisite.

UGC refers to any mentions of your brand or products made by third parties such as your customers. Stores where UGC is flourishing find it much easier to run customer engagement campaigns.

UGC doesn't appear on its own — you need to put mechanisms in place that make it more likely to happen. In this article, we'll introduce tactics and strategies for generating UGC.

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Engage with Your Customers

Engaging with your customers is the bare minimum required to generate UGC. Regular, consistent communication creates the fertile ground from which UGC naturally grows.

Here are a few examples of how to engage with your customers.

Commenting on social media posts is the foundation of customer communication. Glossier actively searches Instagram for photos of customers using their products and consistently leaves comments.

Live chat on your store is another important channel for customer communication. Shopify has apps like tidio for live chat directly on your Shopify store, as well as apps like Facebook Messenger ‑ Live Chat and Recart that integrate with Facebook Messenger.

There are also handy third-party chat apps that integrate with Shopify. Channel Talk is a live chat tool for Shopify stores that allows you to proactively reach out to specific customers.

ManyChat is a chat service that integrates with Facebook. Not only can it connect with Shopify to send abandoned cart notifications, it can also collect customer attribute data (such as gender and email address) through the chat and save it as customer records.

You can also build close-knit communication in closed environments like Facebook Groups or LINE groups. While Facebook itself has been losing popularity lately, Facebook Groups offer rich community features and remain quite useful.

Meeting customers in person at physical stores or events can also dramatically close the distance between you and your audience.

As with the aforementioned Glossier, more and more digitally native brands are opening physical stores. At Glossier's retail locations, customers can casually consult with staff and try out their favorite cosmetics (reference: We visited Glossier, the store by growth hacker Emily Weiss).

Communicate as a Person

Social media accounts where the operator (the person behind the brand) is front and center tend to generate higher engagement than accounts that post purely as a corporate entity or brand.

It depends on your brand strategy, but if you can inject the operator's personality, it's worth trying.

It's also effective to have employees post from their personal accounts. You can't force them, of course, but posts shared personally by employees tend to drive higher engagement than those posted from a corporate account.

Just Ask

Product reviews are valuable UGC too. The best approach is to ask customers directly and straightforwardly.

Try reaching out by email to customers who made a purchase. As we've mentioned before, Shopify has review apps like Yotpo and Stamped.io.

As introduced in a previous blog post, Stamped.io lets you request reviews via email like the example below (reference: Incredibly efficient acquisition! Email marketing with Shopify). Since customers can reply directly within the email, it makes it easy for them to respond.

Ask Questions

Asking questions that customers find interesting is an effective way to generate UGC.

If you're unsure what questions your customers care about, checking Q&A sites and reviews is the quickest approach.

For example, searching on Quora will show you which questions have many answers and which have few. Starting by referencing the most-answered questions is a good way to kick things off.

You can also look at reviews on your own store, review platforms, or Amazon for inspiration. Reviews reveal what customers are most interested in.

Personally, I find that distributing sample products and conducting direct interviews is the most effective way to truly understand your customers.

Give Customers Something to Brag About

To get customers posting on social media, creating mechanisms that make it easy for them to show off is highly effective.

For example, you could feature active community contributors or highlight standout posts on your official account.

In Facebook Groups, the number of posts and comments per user is automatically tracked, making this easy to measure. You can also see top contributors and gauge overall activity levels.

As a more formal approach, you can award ranks or badges to community contributors. Airbnb recognizes its most active community members by designating them as top contributors.

Our beloved Shopify also lets you see who has collected the most Likes. Japanese Shopify Partners would love to crack the global rankings someday.

At a company I worked with previously, we created all kinds of rankings and sent certificates to the top-ranked participants. Regardless of the category, people were genuinely delighted by the certificates — many of them posted photos of them on Instagram.

Hashtag Contests

Hashtag contests are a powerful way to give UGC a significant boost.

A hashtag contest is a promotion where customers post on social media using a specific hashtag, a winner is selected from those entries, and a prize is awarded. There are also variations where customers tag friends instead of using a hashtag.

Cellucor, an energy drink brand on Shopify, runs contests regularly. The rules are: follow Cellucor's account, tag three friends, and post about your favorite Cellucor product flavor.

In Cellucor's case, running contests on a regular schedule helps prevent follower drop-off after each contest ends.

Diagnostics and Quizzes

Diagnostic content was once hugely popular on social media, and quizzes and assessments remain among the most shareable types of content out there.

If you can create a fun, brand-relevant quiz or diagnostic, you have the potential to generate UGC at scale.

Beardbrand, a beard oil brand we've featured before, is the gold standard for quiz-based commerce with their "beard type quiz" (reference: 19 Ways to Build an Email List on Shopify).

After answering 10 questions about beard characteristics,

You receive a result like the one below. The results are humorous enough that you can't help wanting to share them, and product recommendations are presented based on your result.

The Shopify App Store also has quiz-building apps like Visual Quiz Builder and Fyrebox Quizzes.

Beardbrand uses Typeform, a SaaS form builder that offers advanced features and the ability to create beautifully designed forms.

Executing UGC Operations Thoroughly with StoreHero

StoreHero supports Shopify merchants who are looking to boost their sales with thorough execution of growth strategies.

For UGC operations, we leverage the StoreHero growth platform to help merchants achieve ongoing growth through highly granular operations that manual management simply can't handle — such as prioritizing review collection based on each product and SKU's performance and inventory data, streamlining gifting campaigns, and executing large volumes of initiatives simultaneously.

We are currently offering free store diagnostics. If you have challenges around UGC or growth strategies in general, please get in touch. Learn more about our free store diagnostic here

Summary

We've covered several methods for generating UGC.

Once you've built your Shopify store, refined your product pages, stabilized your CRM and customer acquisition, and started growing your base of buyers and prospects, it's a great time to start building systems for generating UGC.

For what it's worth, at StoreHero we place strong emphasis on offline engagement — co-hosting events with other brands and participating in community gatherings.

Strategies for generating UGC are still a largely untapped area, so if you've tried any of these approaches, we'd love for you to share your learnings with us.