How Effective UGC Moderation Safeguards Brand Integrity While Preserving Authenticity

User-generated content (UGC) is more important for brands than ever before. Research suggests it is 20% more influential than other media types and increases conversions on ecommerce product pages by an astonishing 161%.

However, using it safely is challenging. Unlike conventional corporate messages, you don’t have full control over what creators say and do.

On one level, this generates authenticity and eliminates corporate polish that puts many consumers off. But on another level, it’s risky. Influencers or contributing customers may say or do things that conflict with your brand’s ethics, values, and standards.

That’s where moderation can help. This practice ensures creators’ output is “brand safe” while maintaining the perks of UGC (i.e. high engagement, authenticity, etc.)

Furthermore, this article explains how to do it. We discuss moderating UGC ads effectively, various strategies you can use, and how to balance brand safety with authenticity.

Why UGC Moderation is Essential for Brand Safety

UGC moderation is essential for brand safety. Filtering unsuitable content protects your public image and prevents brand damage, which can occur easily on social media.

Today, brands need to be more careful than ever before in their moderation efforts because of the changing culture. Where possible, companies should reduce exposure to political, religious or cultural content, unless there is a clear advantage within a specific customer demographic. These topics can be explosive and lead to serious harm (as Bud Lite discovered in its recent debacle).

With that said, UGC moderation is about more than simply protecting brands from the mob and protecting their reputation. It also enhances compliance. Companies that moderate UGC ensure their content adheres to legal and regulatory standards, enabling them to avoid lawsuits and penalties. Well-moderated influencers can’t put companies at risk of copyright infringements, false endorsements, or libel.

Furthermore, brands with proper policies can better maintain their voice and identity. Moderation ensures corporate messaging aligns with core values, making public images more consistent. Companies can stop creators from publishing toxicity and harassment.

Finally, moderation reduces misinformation. It stops UGC from spreading falsehoods that reflect poorly on your company and values. Any content associated with your company speaks the truth and is factual.

Effective Strategies for Moderating UGC

So, how do you moderate UGC online? Which strategies work?

The answer is simpler than you might imagine when you use Billo. Our platform pre-vets creators to ensure they only generate brand-friendly output. This approach means you can work confidently with any of the thousands of influencers on our site, including dozens in your niche. We let you moderate videos you receive and ask creators to change things you don’t like to suit your requirements. It’s all included in the flat, upfront price.

But what if you don’t have access to Billo? What other strategies are available to moderate UGC?

Review Content Before It Goes Live

First, you can review content before it goes live. Don’t push brand-associated UGC out to social media before you pre-vet it. Check that it complies with your guidelines and legal requirements before allowing it to represent your company.

Check items off your compliance checklist, such as:

• No mention of third-party brands
• No use of third-party products, logos, trademarks, or proprietary knowledge
• No cuss words, obscenities or nudity
• No political, racial, or religious remarks

Pay special attention to visual content. Issues can lurk in image backgrounds (behind the creator and any of your products they showcase).

Sometimes your UGC should make controversial statements, but these situations are rare. Most brands should seek to avoid offense.

Enable User Reporting And Flagging

Enabling user reporting and flagging is another strategy for moderating UGC. Viewers will often spot things you miss and raise the issue quickly.

If this happens, act as fast as you can. Review and remove the content if you find something that conflicts with your brand guidelines. Don’t leave it up there and hope for the best.

If you can’t take the content down, disavow it. Remove any links or appearances on your social channels or website.

Combine Automated And Manual Moderation Tools

Sometimes, you can get better UGC moderation results by combining software with human moderators. Automation tools are more mechanical and better at flagging things like nudity whereas people are superior for hidden slurs, slander, and negative attitudes you don’t want to associate with your company.

AI is improving in its ability to detect problematic UGC. But, of course, it isn’t perfect, and human creators can still implement creative ways to get around it.

Establish Community Guidelines

Establishing sound community guidelines is another way you can moderate UGC. When you use Billo, this happens automatically. However, if you reach out to content creators independently, you will need to write them yourself.

Here’s a sample of what UGC creator community guidelines could look like for your brand:

Welcome to the [Brand Name] community. We’re keen to work with you on incredible UGC projects to support our outreach and growth. However, to ensure everyone stays safe, we have some simple guidelines that you, as a creator, must follow.

1. Be respectful – we want everyone to feel welcome at [Brand Name]. Steer clear of anything that might offend a person’s race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion or background.
2. Don’t post harmful content – we want to keep our audiences safe. Avoid anything that involves bullying, harassment or illegal activities.
3. Be honest – don’t exaggerate claims or say anything untrue. Doing so could reduce trust in our community and brand.
4. Make content family-friendly – imagine your grandmother will see it. Avoid anything that could harm children.
5. Don’t self-promote – avoid using UGC to promote your brand or others. Don’t provide unsolicited links to third-party websites.
6. Be original – don’t plagiarize other people’s work.
7. Follow platform rules – ensure the content you share adheres to platform rules as well as ours.
8. Flag negative content – if you see something that violates our guidelines, report it. When you help us, it supports the whole community.

Following these guidelines helps [Brand Name] maintain its reputation and impact more people positively. Thank you for joining our community and we look forward to reviewing your content soon.

Balancing Authenticity with Brand Guidelines in UGC: What Works?

Brand guidelines are essential but you don’t want them to harm the authenticity of your marketing campaigns. UGC creators shouldn’t come across as paid corporate actors. Therefore, striking a balance is essential. You want influencers to have some free rein, but you also want to bring them back to base if they stray too far.

The best approach is to incentivize creativity within the brand framework. Here, you set the parameters and then creators fill in the gaps with their ideas.

One approach is to copy brands that already did this successfully. For instance, numerous companies, like Gymshark and Away, ask customers to post images of them using their products on social media. The approach is safe and effective (with minimal downside risk) but can attract massive engagement (likes and shares).

Another approach is to nest the UGC campaign within a broader competition. For example, you could get influencers to post novel ways they use your product with the most original concepts appearing on your website.

If creators can’t wrap their heads around what you want, showcase examples of UGC you love and get them to emulate it. This approach can sometimes reduce creativity, but it improves safety and reduces the risk of unflattering content relating to your brand going viral.

Lastly, you can promote influencers achieving a balance of authenticity and safety to ambassador status. Rewarding the most profitable UGC creators with recurring payments encourages more customers to think carefully about the content they produce.

Innovative Tools and Technologies for UGC Moderation

Billo’s platform offers a raft of features you can use to moderate UGC. These include:

• Pre-vetting of all influencers on the platform to ensure brand-friendly output
• Secure communication tools to describe your requirements to creators
• The ability to review content before it goes live
• Automated moderation tools
• Customizable briefs to help UGC creators avoid specific hazards (such as mentioning a competitor’s intellectual property)

The most sophisticated approaches to UGC moderation are multi-layered. Combining techniques is often more effective than relying on a single strategy.

Effective UGC moderation should include:

• User flagging capabilities (to track down content that doesn’t serve your brand)
• Real-time moderation tools (particularly important for live UGC)
• Data-driven moderation that drills into situations where your moderation efforts need to be strongest (and where they are most likely to fail)
• Contextual moderation tools that analyze words and images based on their context to help prevent false positives (moderating content wrongly) or negatives (failing to moderate UGC when it is necessary)
• Machine learning models that can detect off-brand content or UGC that contradicts your guidelines

Using these tools in combination allows your brand to ensure user-generated content doesn’t misrepresent it. Keeping a human in the loop is still essential, but tools like Billo reduce the risk further and prevent dangerous UGC from going live.