Assessing the creator role: brief, match, content and use

What the creator role is

User-generated content, or UGC, is video and imagery made by people outside the company: customers, fans or creators hired for the purpose. For marketing, it usually means short videos in which a real person shows or talks about a product in their own style.

Getting it has traditionally been manual work: searching for creators, writing to them, explaining the brief and chasing the files. An agent with a creator role takes on the searching, matching and sending. Choosing the creators and approving the content stay with you.

Start with the brief

The brief is the task to set. Write it the way you would say it: who you want to reach, what the product is and what you would like a video to show. For example, an independent bookstore might say: 'Readers in their twenties who like fantasy. Show our monthly subscription box being opened.'

A good agent turns that into something a creator can act on without making you fill in a long form. Ask to see what the creator will receive.

Leave room in the brief. Creators are chosen for their own style, and a script that dictates every line tends to produce a stiff video. State the one thing that must be shown and the one thing that must not be said, and let the rest be theirs.

Reading the match

Ask what the match is based on and look at the creators it proposes. Three attributes are worth reading.

• Size. A creator's audience size shapes cost and reach. Bigger is not automatically better for a local or niche product.
• Industry. Someone who already makes content about food, fitness or books will be believed on the subject.
• Niche. The narrower fit: vegan baking, trail running, fantasy fiction.

What to agree before a video is used

A video sent by a creator is not automatically yours to use anywhere. As general guidance, agree in writing where it may appear, for how long, and whether it may run as a paid ad.

Ask any vendor how those terms are set and recorded in its product, and how creators are paid. Nothing in this entry is legal advice.

From video to ad

The creator role is most useful when it connects to the ads role, because an agent that holds both can move a video across without a download and an upload. Ask to see that path, and check that the ad draft carries the same cost line and approval step as any other ad. The entry on the ads role covers what to read.

Where Link AI fits

Link AI by Linkme is our pick for this role. Linkme describes a creator marketplace under the line 'Tell Link the brief. Link brings you the creators.' The sequence has four steps. First you describe, in plain words, who you want to reach. Link AI then selects creators on Linkme according to size, industry and niche. Those who accept send in their videos. The ones you like best can be run as ads from your dashboard.

Linkme's page does not cover payment, usage terms or how many creators a brief reaches, so raise each one in the demo. Try Link AI in a demo using a brief you would really send.

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