A Guide to User Generated Content Strategy for Events

A user generated content strategy is a game plan for encouraging, collecting, and using the authentic content your event attendees create. It’s about intentionally designing experiences for live events, conferences, and brand activations that people are genuinely excited to share, turning your event into a powerful engine for real-time online storytelling and post-event marketing.

What a UGC Strategy Means for Live Events

Unlike a general social media campaign that casts a wide net, a UGC strategy for a live event is hyper-focused. It treats the in-person experience as the primary source for content creation.

The goal is to turn your conference or brand activation into a content goldmine, creating a ripple effect that extends your event's life and reach far beyond the venue walls. This mindset shifts the event planner from being a passive content collector to an active architect of shareable moments. A solid strategy is built on knowing your goals and your audience long before the first attendee walks through the door.

Defining Your Core Objectives

Every great plan starts with knowing what you want to accomplish. Are you trying to amplify brand awareness? Generate qualified leads? Or stock up on authentic photos and videos for future marketing? Each goal requires a different playbook.

For instance, if brand awareness is the objective, the focus should be on creating visually stunning, highly shareable moments. If lead generation is the prize, an experience could be designed to capture attendee information in exchange for a cool digital souvenir, like a custom AI portrait.

A well-planned user generated content strategy transforms attendees from passive viewers into active participants and brand advocates. It's the difference between an event that happens at people and one that happens with them.

Key Components of an Event UGC Strategy

An effective strategy has a few key parts that work together to create a seamless experience for attendees and deliver incredible results for the brand.

It all boils down to these key ingredients:

• Designing Share-Worthy Experiences: This is the heart of the strategy. It’s about creating moments so cool, fun, or visually striking that people can't help but pull out their phones. An AI photo booth that turns a simple snapshot into a unique piece of art is a perfect example; the desire to share is baked right in.
• Providing the Right Tools: It must be simple for people to create and share high-quality content. This could mean setting up dedicated photo or video booths, ensuring strong Wi-Fi, and giving people clear, simple instructions on how to post.
• Clear Calls-to-Action and Incentives: People often need a nudge. Promote a specific, memorable event hashtag and tell them what’s in it for them, whether it’s a chance to be featured on a big screen, win a prize, or just get an amazing photo of themselves.
• A Plan for Amplification: The work isn't done when the content is created. A real strategy includes a plan for how to showcase and repurpose all this amazing content, both in real-time at the event and long after it's over, to maximize its value.

Why UGC Is Crucial for Modern Event Marketing

A smart user generated content strategy is about more than just having content to post on social media accounts. It builds a bedrock of trust and authenticity that polished, top-down brand messaging cannot touch. When real attendees at a live event share their honest experiences, that content carries a weight and credibility that connects with their networks.

This is where the magic happens. A great UGC strategy turns attendees into a powerful, voluntary marketing team. Their posts, stories, and videos expand an event's reach in real time, creating a wave of organic buzz and social proof that money can't buy.

Building Trust Through Authenticity

Today's audiences are sharp. They can spot a corporate sales pitch from a mile away and are far more likely to trust a recommendation from a peer than from a brand. UGC is the ultimate form of that peer-to-peer endorsement.

Every photo from a branded photo booth or video testimonial shared from the event floor is a personal stamp of approval. It’s one person telling their entire network, "This was awesome, this was valuable, and you should've been here." This genuine excitement is the foundation of modern event marketing.

The data backs this up. A staggering 82% of consumers say they're more likely to buy from brands that use UGC. And when 93% of marketers agree that content from real customers outperforms their own branded content, it's clear authenticity isn't just a feel-good word, it's a serious business driver.

Expanding Reach and Generating Assets Cost-Effectively

One of the most practical upsides to a solid UGC plan is its impact on your budget. Professional photo and video shoots for events are expensive and take significant coordination. A well-designed live activation, on the other hand, can generate a massive library of marketing assets for a fraction of the cost.

An event built around creating shareable moments doesn't just produce content; it creates a self-perpetuating marketing engine. The content generated by attendees becomes the advertisement for the event itself, both in real time and for future promotions.

Think about the ROI of an experience that encourages people to share. You not only get powerful, in-the-moment promotion but also a treasure trove of authentic content to use across all your post-event marketing materials:

• Social Media Campaigns: Fuel Instagram, LinkedIn, and TikTok feeds for weeks or months with real faces and genuine excitement from your event.
• Website and Landing Pages: Use attendee photos to show people what your event is like, not just tell them.
• Future Event Promotion: What better way is there to sell tickets for next year’s conference than with a gallery of happy, engaged attendees from this year?

Exploring different types of user-generated content campaigns can help you find the perfect approach for your specific event goals.

Gathering Unfiltered Event Feedback

Finally, the content your attendees create is a direct line into their unfiltered thoughts and feelings about your event. Digging into the photos, captions, and comments from your conference or activation gives you invaluable qualitative data. Are people taking pictures at the keynote stage, the networking lounge, or the interactive tech demo?

This analysis tells you what truly connected with them. By paying close attention to what your audience chooses to capture and share, you get honest feedback on which parts of your live event were the most engaging and memorable. This information is pure gold for optimizing future events and making sure every element of your next one is a certified hit.

How to Build Your Event UGC Strategy

Crafting a killer user-generated content strategy isn’t something you improvise on the day of your event. The real work starts long before the doors open, with a clear roadmap designed to turn your attendees into your most passionate brand advocates.

The bedrock of that roadmap is knowing exactly what you’re trying to accomplish at your live event.

Are you looking to splash your brand across social media and boost awareness? Then your focus should be on creating visually stunning, instantly shareable moments. Or maybe your main goal is lead generation? In that case, you’ll want experiences that capture attendee info in exchange for a cool, personalized digital souvenir. If you're just trying to stock up on authentic content for future marketing, your strategy will lean into capturing high-quality photos and videos.

Once your goals are crystal clear, you can start thinking about your audience and what kind of content they'll actually be excited to create and share.

Designing Share-Worthy Experiences

The heart of any great event UGC strategy is creating 'share-worthy' experiences. These are the moments at a conference or activation that people are genuinely excited to capture and post, not because you asked them to, but because they want to. This is about more than just setting up a branded backdrop and crossing your fingers.

A truly share-worthy experience is interactive, fun, and gives the attendee something valuable right away. It should feel less like a marketing station and more like a can't-miss highlight of the event itself. This is where the right technology can be a total game-changer.

Think about an AI-powered photo booth. It can become a high-energy hub for UGC, transforming a simple portrait into a wild piece of art or dropping an attendee into a fantastical, on-brand world. You’re giving them something they can’t make on their own, and the final image is so unique that sharing it feels like the natural next step.

Communicating Value and Driving Action

Even the most amazing experience needs a little push to get the ball rolling. This is where your calls to action, branded hashtags, and well-promoted incentives come into play.

Your event hashtag needs to be short, catchy, and unique. Put it everywhere, on screens, signage, and right at the activation. More importantly, you have to be crystal clear about what’s in it for the attendees.

• Recognition: Feature the best posts on a big screen or a live social media wall. It creates an awesome feedback loop where people see their content celebrated and want to get in on the action.
• Prizes: Offer a tangible reward for the "best photo" or "most creative video." A little friendly competition can go a long way.
• Exclusivity: Sometimes, the content itself is the prize. A professionally lit, perfectly branded photo or a slickly edited video clip is a valuable digital keepsake from the live experience.

To really get the most out of your efforts, it helps to understand the different strategies for creating viral content so you can design activations with that potential baked right in.

The most successful UGC strategies make sharing feel like a natural extension of the event experience. By designing a compelling activation and clearly communicating the 'why,' you empower attendees to become your most effective storytellers.

A solid strategy is a powerful thing. It ensures every piece of content created serves a purpose, amplifying your message in real-time and drumming up FOMO for anyone not there. Displaying all this great content on a social media wall for your event can boost participation right on the floor. Plus, it leaves you with a treasure trove of authentic assets for your post-event marketing materials, fueling campaigns for months to come.

UGC Strategy Planning Framework

Building a cohesive UGC strategy from scratch can feel daunting, but breaking it down into manageable stages makes it much more approachable. This framework walks you through the key actions and considerations at each phase of the event process.

By following a structured plan, you can move from abstract goals to concrete actions, ensuring that your UGC efforts are not just fun for attendees but also deliver measurable results for your brand.

Key Technologies for Capturing High-Quality UGC

Simply asking attendees at your live event to use a hashtag is a passive approach to a user-generated content strategy. To drive real results, you need technology that turns content capture into an active, streamlined part of your event. The right tech stack makes it effortless for people to participate and guarantees the content you get is on-brand, high-quality, and ready for your post-event marketing materials.

The goal is to shift from passively collecting random phone snaps to actively generating a high volume of brilliant, branded assets. This is where dedicated tools become absolute game-changers.

The UGC market was valued at around $4.45 billion in 2024 and is projected to skyrocket to $18.6 billion by 2031. That's a compound annual growth rate of nearly 27%, signaling a massive demand for the authentic content that a well-equipped event can produce.

Modern Photo and Video Booths

Today’s photo and video booths are sophisticated content creation engines built for live events. They act as a central, high-energy hub at a conference or activation, drawing people in and making it ridiculously easy to produce professional-quality, branded content.

A modern photo booth experience can create a digital souvenir, not just take a picture. Features like AI background replacement can instantly transport an attendee into a branded world. Digital props and animated overlays ensure every photo aligns perfectly with your event's theme. This isn't just a photo; it’s a unique piece of art they'll be genuinely excited to share.

In the same vein, a video testimonial booth can provide a structured, comfortable space for attendees to share their stories from the event floor. With guided prompts and professional lighting, you can collect powerful, authentic feedback that is miles more compelling than a simple written review.

Real-Time UGC Displays and Social Walls

Capturing content is only half the battle; you have to show it off. Social media walls and live UGC displays are incredibly powerful tools for building real-time event energy and encouraging more people to participate.

When attendees see their own photos and posts pop up on a huge screen at the event, it creates an immediate feedback loop of excitement. This social proof validates their contribution and motivates others to get involved, sparking a fun, friendly competition to get featured.

A live social wall transforms individual moments into a collective experience. It’s a dynamic, visual representation of your event's energy, curated in real-time by your most engaged attendees.

These displays are the bridge connecting your physical event to the wider digital conversation, amplifying FOMO and extending your reach far beyond the venue walls. This real-time storytelling is critical for modern event marketing.

Platforms for Incentivizing and Centralizing UGC

Beyond capture and display, other platforms help manage and motivate participation. Contest and gamification platforms can be woven into your user-generated content strategy to formalize incentives. Instead of a casual prize draw, these tools can track submissions via a hashtag, manage voting, and create leaderboards, adding a layer of organized fun.

A virtual event microsite can act as a digital story-collecting hub. This is especially useful for post-event engagement, where the dedicated site can host photo booth galleries, feature video testimonials, and become a permanent home for the content created at your event, extending its lifespan and value long after the lights go down.

Emerging technologies like artificial intelligence are starting to play a huge role in optimizing and scaling UGC efforts. These advancements offer new ways to generate or manage content, a field you can explore further with guides on AI UGC Content Creation.

Turn Your Event into a Live Story with Real-Time UGC

Creating content is one thing. Weaving it into a powerful, live narrative is where a user-generated content strategy really flexes its muscles for an in-person event. Your activation shouldn't just be happening in one place; it should be a story that unfolds everywhere at once. Real-time online storytelling bridges the gap between your on-site attendees and everyone watching online, creating a single, amplified experience that builds momentum with every post.

This is how you turn passive viewers into active participants. When people see their own photos and posts become part of the event itself, it's a huge validation. It makes them feel like they're co-creating the experience, not just attending it. That energy is contagious, creating serious FOMO and forging a much deeper connection between your physical event and the digital buzz surrounding it.

Spark a Fire with Live Content Displays

Want to get people sharing? Show them what you're looking for. Projecting a curated feed of the best UGC onto big screens or a dedicated social wall at your event creates an immediate and exciting feedback loop.

When an attendee sees their photo flash across a giant screen, it triggers a chain reaction:

• It Inspires More Sharing: Suddenly, everyone wants their 15 seconds of fame. People see what gets featured and are motivated to create their own high-quality content.
• It’s Instant Social Proof: A screen filled with smiling, engaged people is the best advertisement your event could possibly have. It screams, "This is the place to be."
• It Steers the Narrative: You get to be the director. By curating the feed, you highlight the moments and messages that best capture the energy you want to create.

This live display becomes the visual heartbeat of your event. To really nail the execution, check out our complete guide on creating a social media wall for events.

Weave Attendee Content into Your Official Channels

Your brand's own social media accounts are your megaphone for this live story. Don't just post your own professional shots. Start sprinkling in the best attendee submissions on your Instagram Stories, LinkedIn feed, or X (formerly Twitter) threads in real-time. It's a simple, yet powerful, way to publicly celebrate your community.

Make sure to tag the creators when you feature their content. That simple shout-out gives them a moment in the spotlight and motivates their own network to tune in. It shows you’re not just talking at your audience; you’re listening and having a conversation with them.

By spotlighting attendee content, you shift the narrative from "look what we're doing" to "look what our community is creating together." This collaborative tone is far more authentic and engaging for both in-person and online audiences.

This approach is especially powerful on platforms like TikTok. In 2025, data shows that UGC is projected to drive 60% of brand engagement on the platform. Even more telling, TikTok videos featuring user-generated content have a 35% higher watch-through rate than slick, polished ads. It's proof that raw, relatable content is what truly grabs and holds people's attention. You can learn more about how UGC performs on social platforms.

You can take it even further. Run live polls featuring user submissions, or give a shout-out to the top creators directly from the stage. These tactics don't just engage your audience; they make them the heroes of the story, cementing their bond with your brand and making sure the buzz around your event lasts long after the lights go down.

Measuring the ROI of Your UGC Strategy

A great user generated content strategy isn't just about fun photos and hashtags; it's about delivering real business value. After all the planning and execution at your live event, you have to prove it worked. This means looking past surface-level stats like 'likes' and digging into the tangible outcomes that show a clear return on your investment, including content for post-event marketing materials.

To get the full story, you need to track both the numbers and the nuance. Quantitative data tells you what happened, while qualitative feedback tells you why it mattered. Combining the two gives you a complete picture of your campaign’s success and the hard data you need to make your case to stakeholders.

Key Quantitative Metrics to Track

The foundation of measuring any marketing effort is tracking the right numbers. These metrics provide a clear, objective look at how your strategy performed during and after your event. Start by focusing on the data points that tie directly back to the goals you set in the beginning, whether that was brand awareness, lead generation, or content creation.

Here are the essential metrics you should be watching:

• Total Reach and Impressions: Use analytics tools to monitor your event hashtag across all social platforms. This number shows you the total potential audience your attendee-created content reached, giving you a top-level view of your event's digital footprint.
• Volume of Content Generated: How many good pieces of content did you actually get? A high number of posts from a photo booth or a hashtag campaign is a strong sign that you had an engaged audience and delivered a successful experience.
• Engagement Rate Comparison: This one is powerful. Compare the engagement rate (likes, comments, shares) on UGC posts against your own branded content. If UGC is getting more love, you have a compelling data point that proves the value of authentic, user-driven content.
• Referral Traffic and Conversions: If your event was focused on generating leads, this is critical. Track how much traffic was driven to your website from links shared with UGC. If you used a photo booth that collected emails, you can directly attribute how many leads came from that specific activation.

Analyzing Qualitative Success

Numbers don't tell the whole story. Sometimes, the real gold is in the content itself. Qualitative analysis helps you understand the emotional impact of your event and the general feeling, or sentiment, around your brand.

This means you have to go beyond the metrics and actually look at the content. What are people showing in their photos? Are they smiling, interacting, and having a good time? What are they writing in their captions and comments? This manual review gives you priceless insight into attendee satisfaction and what parts of your live event really hit the mark.

Sentiment analysis is your direct line into the attendee mindset. It transforms a collection of photos and hashtags into a rich source of unfiltered feedback, telling you not just if people shared, but how they felt when they did.

This kind of qualitative insight is crucial for proving the less tangible but equally important benefits of your UGC strategy. It helps you demonstrate improved brand perception and a stronger community connection. For a deeper dive, you can learn more about all the different ways to measure event success and tie all your data points together into a cohesive story.

Common Questions About Event UGC Strategy

Even with a rock-solid user-generated content strategy, a few questions always pop up, especially when you're in the thick of a live event. Navigating the finer points of legal permissions, content moderation, and what actually gets attendees to participate is what separates a good activation from a great one.

Thinking through these common hurdles ahead of time means you're ready for anything. It frees up your team to do what they do best: create an amazing experience for your guests. Here are some of the most frequent questions we get, along with our straight-to-the-point answers for event marketers.

How Do I Get Legal Permission to Use Attendee Content?

The best approach is always total transparency. Don't hide the fine print. Clearly state how you plan to use the content in your event's terms and conditions, on signage right there at the activation, and within the interface of any UGC tech you're using.

For something like a video testimonial booth or a photo experience, the technology should have customizable terms that attendees agree to before they even get their content. This essentially acts as a media release. If you come across a truly amazing piece of content you want to feature in a major campaign, it’s always safest to reach out to the creator directly for explicit, written permission. A quick, personal DM goes a long way.

What If We Receive Negative or Off-Brand UGC?

This is where a good moderation plan becomes essential. If you’re using a live social wall, make sure your platform has a moderation queue. This lets you approve every single piece of content before it goes public, giving you complete control over what everyone at the event sees.

For general hashtag campaigns, have a social media manager actively monitoring the feed during the event. If legitimate negative feedback comes through, address it. Responding constructively and professionally can actually be a great opportunity to show your brand is listening. As for the obvious trolls? Just ignore them. If you run a fun, well-organized event, the vast majority of the content will be overwhelmingly positive.

The key to encouraging participation is to make sharing an intuitive and enjoyable part of the experience, not a chore.

How Can I Encourage Participation Without It Feeling Forced?

Forget begging people to post. Instead, focus on making your activation so cool or visually stunning that sharing becomes a natural reaction. A breathtaking photo backdrop, an interactive AI photo experience, or a clever video prompt will have people pulling out their phones without you having to ask.

Incentives, like a prize for the "best photo," can definitely give participation a boost. But the real driver should always be the quality and fun of the activation itself. Make the act of sharing simple with clear instructions, QR codes, and social sharing options built right into the experience.