5 Ways to Create Effective Branded Content

There’s no better way to help spread the word about your brand to the general public that free swag. If you choose correctly, you can allow customers and clients to do your marketing work for you.

How do you do this? The best way is digital branded content.

Depending on what you create, you can enjoy a long shelf life on your products and promotional content. Check out these 5 tips to creating the best-branded content. 

1. Find Great Partners

One of the top ways to create memorable branded content is to find amazing partners. You can’t go at the process for more than one angle if you attempt to do everything in-house.

You’ll save on the overhead of full-time staff by creating a partnership with great content creators in your field. When vetting your partners, make sure they have a proven track record. 

Don’t let advertisements be your guide to understanding a company’s work. You’ll need a portfolio of work that matches your intended outcome to choose from.

Be sure you get three bids from agencies before deciding on a final vendor. You can buy assets from around the web to create your content, but you want an ongoing relationship with someone who does custom work just for you. 

Go with the best value over the best price. Saving money isn’t really saving if you’re creating forgettable branded content. 

2. Use Freebies

A little known resource for branded content creators is online graphics resources. These resources like Canva, allow you to create custom content using existing graphics cards.

These are a quick way to get posters, business cards or other corporate identity materials printed without having to spend a fortune on each project. Small businesses can now brand small projects without fear of using up their entire budget on branded content assets. 

These assets range from free to low cost. You won’t have to worry about compatibility either. Most crowdsourced graphics come in multiple formats so you can use them in just about any software.

Sites like Graphic River include a free graphic every month for you to download. Get creative by using this download as a potential theme for your next branded content story. 

If you’re planning to use stock graphics on a regular basis, consider signing up for a subscription. Stock graphics come in hand for everything from creating blog posts to custom email signatures. 

3. Stay Relevant

In order to stay relevant in a saturated market of branded content, you’ll need to use your best storytelling skills. Good stories are relevant to the reader.

Make sure you understand your audience before trying to decide what’s relevant to them. Do market research to learn your customer’s persona.

This includes their political views, vacation style, family type, age, race, and personal habits. You’d be surprised at how easy it is to group people together based on just a few shared interests.

You’ll find trends in your customer research that allows you to better communicate with your audience since you know where they’ll likely be shopping and spending their time online. Don’t avoid controversial topics.

Showing where your brand stands on sensitive subjects is probably one of the best ways to get loyalty. Customers are more likely to stand up for a brand that stands up for their interests. 

You don’t have to go completely political, but your corporate values matter. Hire a PR team if you’re confused about how to best craft your message to represent your brand.

Once you put this message out, it’ll be hard to retract it later. The stories you tell should be evergreen in their representation of your culture. 

4. DIY

It’s not necessary to hire a completely new team to get your branded content going in-house. Designate one creative employee to help get your content started.

No matter how many partners you work with, someone needs to oversee their work and give direction or approvals. Have some on the inside make decisions with them and even create content.

If you don’t have such an employee, it might be helpful to train someone in the basics of content creation. You want the flexibility to create content outside the bounds of your partnership contract.

For example, if a news story breaks, how do you react quickly to your website? Not all partnerships grant you infinite time to content creation.

You’ll need your own people in place to make that happen. Hire a recent graduate if you’re looking to save money but need someone fast. 

5. Use Social

Social media is the holy grail of branded content. With Instagram and Facebook improving their video capabilities, you can’t go wrong with making these platforms the focus of your campaign.

Social media isn’t going anywhere for a while. Make sure you have a specific strategy just for reaching people through social stories.

There’s a big difference between these posts and website posts because you’re competing with lots of other content. The great news is that if someone sees something interesting in your feed, they’ll be more likely to visit your page and spend time there.

That’s why it’s great to tailor your content to the channel so it’s easy to digest. Make sure you only post short videos on Instagram, for example, because its screen is more suitable for mobile phone viewing.

Research shows that people don’t use their mobile phones often for viewing longer content. 

Promoting Your Branded Content

Branded content is a necessity by any company large or small. When creating content, make sure you are communicating well with the audience.

If your information isn’t relevant, the viewer will find someone else that is. For more information and tips, visit our blog for updates.