How do I get user-generated content for my business?

User-generated content (UGC) — photos, videos, posts, and reels created by your actual customers — is the highest-ROI marketing asset for any local business. It converts at 4–7x the rate of brand-created ads because viewers trust other customers more than they trust businesses.

The four-step playbook to generate it predictably:

1. Pick the platform that matches your customers. Coffee shops and restaurants: Instagram first (food content gets the highest engagement of any category on the platform). Gyms and fitness: TikTok and Instagram Reels. Boutiques and retail: Instagram + Pinterest. Service businesses (salons, dentists, vets): Facebook works disproportionately well.

2. Pick the action that matches the platform. On Instagram: story tag (easiest entry) → feed photo (more committed) → reel (highest-effort, highest-value). Match the perk to the effort.

3. Offer a perk that costs you less than the content is worth. A free side dish costs the restaurant $1–$2 and produces a piece of content the restaurant would otherwise pay a photographer $50–$200 to create. The economics are obscenely good if you can systematize the ask.

4. Make it dead simple to redeem. A printed QR code at the table or counter. The QR opens a page that says: "Post about us on Instagram, show your server, get a free [item]." The customer doesn't need an account, an app, or anything else.

What trips most businesses up: forgetting the FTC disclosure (the customer must use #ad), and not having a system to verify the post actually happened before redeeming. Social Perks handles both — every campaign auto-injects the right disclosure for the platform, and a server-side verifier checks the post exists and matches before the perk can be redeemed.