When it comes to using customer content in your marketing, brands generally fall into one of two schools of thought: those that build a formal, legally sound process, and those that rely on informal social media etiquette.
Camp A: The Airtight Legal Framework
This camp prioritizes legal safety above all else. It involves getting explicit, written permission for every single piece of user-generated content (UGC) before it's used on any of your marketing channels. The argument is that customer photos, videos, and reviews are copyrighted works, and using them without a license is infringement. Attorneys like John Dozier, speaking on Ecommerce Conversations, consistently warn about the dangers of copyright theft. This approach prevents those problems from the start.
The best way to do this at scale, as detailed in an episode of The EcomCrew Ecommerce Podcast, is to build rights acquisition directly into a formal submission process. You can run a hashtag contest or create a dedicated portal where your terms of service clearly state that by submitting content, the user grants you a license to use it in your marketing. It’s a transparent process that respects the customer as a creator and treats their content with the same legal diligence as any other asset you'd license, fully aligning with best practices in intellectual property law.
Camp B: The "Repost and Credit" Culture
This camp is less of a defined strategy and more of a common practice. It leans on the norms of social media, where a simple @-mention is often seen as sufficient credit. Brands in this camp will screen-grab customer posts, share them in their stories or on their feed, and simply tag the original poster in the caption. They're banking on the user being happy about the exposure and the low likelihood of any real legal challenge.
While experts like Chris Shaffer on The My Wife Quit Her Job Podcast correctly emphasize how critical it is to leverage user-generated content to build trust, the practical details of how to do so legally are sometimes missed. This leads brands to adopt the faster, but riskier, "repost and credit" method. The reality is that this is technically copyright infringement, and it exposes the brand to potential legal action and reputational damage, as was discussed in the Ecommerce Conversations episode on copyright theft. A simple DMCA takedown notice is the best-case scenario; a lawsuit is the worst.
Personally, I believe Camp A is the only responsible way to operate. The small amount of effort it takes to set up a formal rights-request process is insignificant compared to the potential legal and brand reputation risk of being seen as a business that steals from its own customers. Getting permission shows you respect your community’s creativity, which builds far more brand loyalty than a repost ever could. It protects you, and it honors them.
For a small brand just starting out, this doesn't need to be complicated. You can manage this manually with a clear direct message asking for permission and saving a screenshot of the user's affirmative reply. As you grow, you can implement a more scalable system. This could be a third-party UGC platform, or you can make contests and formal submission campaigns a core part of your broader content marketing strategy. The specific tool matters less than the principle: make asking for rights a non-negotiable step in your workflow.