Whether your aim is to enhance brand awareness or encourage sales, showcasing your brand to the world can be a daunting prospect.
With social media usage at an all time high (Facebook currently boasts 1.73 billion users who visit the site on a daily basis), it makes sense for brands to incorporate these platforms into their marketing strategy.
Branded content is a form of marketing published by a company or creator (influencers, celebrities, or public figures) in collaboration with business partners (marketers, brands, sponsors, or advertisers) in exchange for value. This is usually monetary compensation or otherwise.
Social media, like Facebook, is an effective place to deliver branded content due to its audience size. Facebook offers their own branded content tool to content creators.
Let’s delve deeper to uncover what this tool is, how to get started, and the best brand content creation tools to make your marketing content.
What Is The Facebook Branded Content Tool?
The Facebook Branded Content Tool launched in 2016, available to anyone with a Facebook page.
The Branded Content Tool enables a user to clearly mark their content as part of a partnership or paid for. In this case, ‘paid’ can be associated with any exchange of compensation for partnering with the brand and not just cash.
The Facebook Branded Content Tool helps creators to disclose a partnership to an audience. Using the Branded Content Tool also gives the partnered branded access to the post analytics.
How to Use The Branded Content Tool
There are varying ways to add a Facebook branded content tag to your posts – either via page composer, Pages Manager App, Ads Manager, or via several APIs.
From a page, create your post and choose the small ‘handshake’ symbol:
From here, you’ll be able to choose your business partner’s page by typing in their name or URL. Click publish. Your post should look something similar to below in highlighting both partners names:
You can also post live video content with Facebook Branded Content Tool. To do so, go to your Facebook page, click publish, click on the ‘handshake’ icon, then choose your partners page. Choose live video to start your broadcast.
If you’re using Ads Manager, choose your campaign objective, audience, budget, and schedule. Select the format for your ad. Then, click on ‘show advanced options’. Here, select the branded content section and type in your business partners page name where it asks ‘who is your business partner for this post?’ Choose your partners page, finish choosing your settings and place order. Your ad will now show with both your page name and your business partners.
What Are The Best Brand Content Creation Tools to Use?
When it comes down to creating content for brand partnerships, you need to be using the best content creation tools possible. Let’s be honest, publishing great content helps your audience to engage and connect with your brand.
So, what are the best brand content creation tools to use, and how can you use them to your advantage? Let’s take a look.
Content Research Tools
Before creating your content, you need to thoroughly plan it. Here are a few tools that help you to prepare the best content for your brand.
Google Trends
Google Trends analyzes how popular specific search queries are to help users identify trending topics. This tool can be particularly beneficial if you want your content to capture news-worthy events or subjects.
The great thing about Google Trends is that it displays real time data. You can search for topics you’re interested in to discover how popular they are at present, or view topics to determine how popular they are by location.
Google Alerts
If you’ve got a specific topic relevant to your brand, set up an alert via Google and get the latest content related to it delivered to your inbox. This is highly effective if you wish to save time conducting research.
Image Creation Tools
Images can often speak a thousand words so it’s important to choose the right ones for your brand.
Canva
With both free and paid options, Canva is ideal for small and large brands. With Canva, you can create custom images using templates, stock images, a range of fonts, and much more.
Canva is an easy to use platform, offering ready-made blank templates for blogs, video, social media, infographics, and more.
Stencil
Stencil helps you to save time creating images for social media. Search over 2 million royalty-free stock images, use over 1,000 templates, upload your own fonts, or search from 3000 Google fonts.
Video Creation Tools
Video content can be highly entertaining, engaging, and easy to digest. Here are some video creation tools to consider.
Renderforest
If you’re looking to create video content, Renderforest enables you to make slideshows and animations alongside traditional video. This cloud based tool offers templates for quick and easy video production.
Biteable
Offering HDTV quality, Biteable allows you to create 10 videos per month for free (although you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan to export them). Opting for the paid feature gives you access to their video stock library and custom watermarks.
Infographic Creation Tools
Infographics present extensive data in a visually pleasing way, packing a big idea into a relatively small space.
Piktochart
Piktochart offers users fully customizable templates and a 30-day free trial of its platform. Its paid feature provides unlimited visual creation, as well as larger image file uploads.
Top Branded Content Marketing Tools
You’ve created your brand content – now it’s time to market it! Content marketing communicates your brand messaging to consumers, in addition to driving sales and brand awareness.
Here’s a rundown of the best branded content marketing tools to utilize.
Insense
89% of marketers state that the ROI from influencer marketing is better or comparable to other marketing methods. Influencers can drive huge returns for businesses so it makes sense to collaborate with them on campaigns.
At Insense, we help you to find the best content creators for your marketing campaigns and work with them.
Here’s how to use our platform:
First, it’s important to note your creative brief. In your Insense dashboard, go to create a campaign and start to fill out your brief:
In your brief, note your campaign name, cover, and product description. You should also select the type of campaign you’re going to run:
Once the brief is sent, it’s placed in review by our team. They will then supply feedback (if required) to improve your brief. Next, you choose your creators who you wish to work with and send them your brief. Select your creators via your specifications. You can search Insense using hashtags, location, gender, and more:
Once the creator accepts your brief, you can discuss further details of your project, including setting a draft deadline and final submission date:
When you’ve received your completed campaign, you can upload it for Facebook Ads or however you wish. Remember to use the correct settings on the Branded Content Tool if you’re using your content on Facebook.
HubSpot
HubSpot offers users a range of tools, including sales and marketing, content management, and social media advertising. One of its best features is the opportunity for A/B testing.
If you’re running a campaign for the first time, it's imperative to conduct a lot of testing. The problem with using just one type of advert is that it could potentially fail. That doesn’t mean people don’t like you or your brand – it may just be the case that in this instance, the audience didn’t connect with your content.
HubSpot & Kissmetrics’ A/B Testing Kit gives you everything you need to start A/B testing your content.
Testing your content helps you to understand what works and what doesn’t. Try using different creatives, various targetings, landing pages, and formats. It’s also a good idea to work with between 5 to 10 differing content creators.
Adobe Marketing Cloud
Adobe Marketing Cloud provides the ability to manage multiple channels, marketing campaigns, and personalization from just one platform.
Using four key products – Experience Manager, Adobe Campaign, Adobe Target, and Marketo Engage, you can create content, manage ads, test and optimize, in addition to lead management and cross-selling.
Branded Content Develops Awareness
Branded content develops brand awareness and grabs attention. Following our tutorial in this article shows you how to use the Facebook Branded Content Tool when sharing collaborated content on the social media platform.
If you’re looking to work with content creators on your next marketing campaign, try Insense today.
