Answers to 3 burning branded content questions

I spend a lot of my time with clients and publishers talking about branded content and how to drive more revenue.

One of the best parts of presenting branded content strategies to — and meeting with — media professionals is hearing their questions and feedback as it influences how we can make our programs better.

That feedback provides a roadmap on the kinds of training and services we should offer to help our clients — and potential new clients — and helps make our branded content program stronger as it’s based on addressing the biggest needs publishers have.

I thought it would be helpful to share the top questions around branded content that I got this week through a few presentations I gave.

🤷 1. How do we get past single stories and into multi-story campaigns?

This is hands down one of the biggest challenges of branded content, but clearly one of the biggest opportunities as well.

The first answer is to require it but that’s sometimes a bit easier said than done.

There are a few paths that I think work here:

• The best content: Share the kinds of stories and themes that work best with branded content and use them to sell a three-month campaign. Those themes could look like this over a three-month program:

A story about their expertise on an issue
A customer success story
A story on a cause they are involved with in the community

• Give us time: Explain to the advertiser that they need time to see what it’s like to work with you in a content-creation relationship, you need to learn more about their tone and style and you need to establish the kinds of stories you can develop with them that will be popular with your audience. It’s a bit like dating. You need some time together to see if it can get really serious (like a 6 or 12 month extension).

If there is no wiggle room on doing  more than a single story, suggest that you would like the opportunity to use the story as a test to show how successful the program can be. Ask to be able to review the data and discuss getting to a three-month program after it runs. It’s important that your content strategist takes into account that you want to do more content, so they don’t cover every angle possible in that first story.

✍️ 2. What’s the difference between a freelancer and a content strategist?

While I love freelancers (we work with many), I think there is a huge difference between someone who gets an assignment, interviews someone and submits a story (a freelancer) versus someone who is caring for an advertising relationship for you, working to extend the campaign and trying to drive more revenue for you (a content strategist).

One of the things I often think about when it comes to branded content campaigns is that publishers are putting their advertising relationship in the hands of a freelancer whose background is in writing and not shaping the advertiser’s message, customer care and helping drive more revenue. It’s just different.

Content strategists are people who come with a blend of understanding about what makes great stories, but also the best have a solid grip on the business side. They should be motivated to create engaging content but do everything they can to get the advertiser to do more work with publisher.

📱 3. How should we use social media to promote the content?

There are two missteps I see publishers making with branded content on social media right now.

The first is the labeling. Many aren’t labeling the content appropriately. They should be using Meta’s tools to label the content as a paid partnership, tagging the organization they are doing the content for.

The second is that if they are doing a paid program, they are doing boosted posts. Doing a paid ad campaign is much more effective. I particularly love Story Collections, which basically allows a publisher to feature a variety of paid stories in a single campaign. This is really effective, especially if you are doing a multi-month campaign and the content is evergreen.

🤝 We can help

Contact me today at david@davidarkinconsulting.com so we can talk about how to create a great branded content program for your media company.