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4 Ways CrowdRiff Makes It Easier to Get Rights to UGC

With so much content posted to social media every day — over 100 million photos and videos are posted to Instagram alone —  travel marketers have a constant source of fresh content they can use in their marketing. 

Authentic and inspiring, there is a ton of user-generated content just waiting to be used in your digital ads, social feeds, and visitors guides — if you get the rights to use it. 

Getting the rights to content on social media 

That brings us to an important question — how are you requesting rights to the photos and videos you find on social media? 

If you aren’t using a visual content marketing platform like CrowdRiff, getting rights to social content can be tedious and time-consuming, and can add hours of manual work to your weekly to-do list. 

Chances are, your workflow looks something like this: 

  1. Searching individual Instagram hashtags and Facebook Pages for the visuals you want 
  2. Commenting on each post or sending a DM to users to request permission to use it
  3. Manually tracking and recording the images you’ve requested rights to, which were approved, and which requests are still outstanding, likely in a spreadsheet 

This process can take hours of your day and net you few results for the amount of time you put in. 

Instead, CrowdRiff does the heavy lifting for you. It simplifies and streamlines the process, so you spend a fraction of the time getting rights. 

UGC rights

CrowdRiff recommends that you get explicit permission from the creator before using UGC in any channel. This includes your galleries, embeds, and Media Hub.

It is at your, and your organization’s discretion to determine the level of risk you are willing to take on. Keep in mind that once you have the appropriate rights to use an image or video, you can get more out of that visual by repurposing it on your website, social media, email, and beyond.

1| Discover more visuals with better, faster, and easier search 

Trying to find the perfect visual directly on social media is hard. Rather than manually combing through endless individual Instagram hashtags, accounts, or Facebook Pages to find a specific image, CrowdRiff’s Intelligent Search does the work for you. 

Powered by artificial intelligence, CrowdRiff’s search is intuitive and as easy as doing a Google search. It recognizes synonyms and word stems, so instead of complicated syntax, you can search for phrases like “friends having brunch downtown”, and it will look for visuals that match that description. 

 

CrowdRiff helps you surface the kind of visuals you’re looking for in seconds, so you spend less time searching and more time using them in your marketing. 

2| A streamlined, simple, and quick request process 

With CrowdRiff, you can send multiple rights requests in minutes. You’re able to request rights to photos and videos from Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter in one central platform. 

Instead of having to type out each comment individually, CrowdRiff lets you pre-set a variety of comments that will automatically be used when you’re ready to send a request. 

 

After selecting a photo or video you’d like the rights to, CrowdRiff will choose one of your pre-set comments and use that. You’re able to send more requests in less time. 

You can also organize your photo requests however you’d like — whether that be by campaign (i.e. “Winter 2020 Digital Ads”), channel (i.e. “Social Media Reposts”), or just general evergreen (i.e. “General Marketing Requests”). That way, every request for every project you’re working on is manageable, organized, and easy to find. 

3| Easily track the status of your requests and find approved images

When you’re manually requesting rights to UGC, it can be hard to keep a record of every request you’ve sent and who has responded.  

CrowdRiff automates that process. 

All requested content stays organized in CrowdRiff, so that you can easily keep track of which photos you’ve requested rights to, which requests are pending, and which have been approved. A simple drop down filter shows you the status of each, and it updates after a request is approved. 

 

This means you don’t have to continue checking on each request — after commenting, CrowdRiff listens for an approval for you.

CrowdRiff automatically logs each time someone responds with “yes”, and archives it so that you have a record of every interaction. Each approved image is also added to your "Rights-Approved" assets stream, and tagged with a helpful, identifying icon. 

4| Quickly identify and access hyper-relevant, @mentioned content 

When an Instagram user @mentions you, you're fed visuals that are highly valuable to your brand. It could be a guest at your hotel posting a photo of themselves lounging poolside and @mentioning you, or a traveler in your city tagging you in their vacation throwback shot. 

In both cases, these kinds of images are highly relevant and come from some of your greatest brand advocates. CrowdRiff makes it easier to find, engage with, and request the rights to these visuals. 

Every post you’re tagged or @mentioned in is added to a separate stream in your library, so they’re easy to identify. Then, you can send customized rights requests to those users without ever having to leave CrowdRiff. 

Get the rights to more visuals in less time with CrowdRiff

From Intelligent Search to @mentioned Instagram content, CrowdRiff helps you get to the best social content as quickly as possible, and removes the time consuming, manual work required to get rights to it. 

*Post updated on July 7, 2020, for accuracy 

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