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The Complete Guide to
Branded Content on Facebook
for Publishers & Agencies
By Liam Corcoran
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For publishers, branded content on Facebook is a potentially lucrative revenue source.
But how should you go about creating branded content for the platform, and what are the
guidelines you should follow? Our complete guide has all you need to know.
One of the most interesting developments in online advertising in 2016 has been the opening
up of Facebook for branded content from publishers and partners.
In April 2016, Facebook allowed publishers to start posting branded content. Of course, most
publishers are keen to figure out how they can best add revenue, and branded content on
Facebook opens potential new revenue stream.
In the last few months there’s been an uptick in their usage from publishers looking to monetise
their reach and name on Facebook, and brands looking to connect with the right audience.
Leading publishers using branded content on Facebook regularly now include digital native like
BuzzFeed and Mashable, as well as legacy sites such as the New York Times, the Washington
Post and more.
For advertisers and agencies, branded content on Facebook represents a news way to market
themselves and their clients. The appeal of the platform lies with the huge audience, as well as
the ease of publishing. All this is enhanced by the possibility of the reader or viewer extending
the reach of your content organically, by sharing it with their friends.
In this guide to branded content for publishers, marketers and agencies, we’ve divided the key
processes into four key parts; creation, publication, distribution and measurement.
Creation: What to Aim For
We’ve looked at some successful examples of branded content on social media on the blog
before.
Crucially, it’s important to make the content relevant and engaging; the whole point of branded
content after all is to engage the audience in a way that traditional banner and display ads don’t.
When it comes to formats, there are different approaches available on Facebook, and you’ll
need to have an understanding of what kind of audience you’re looking to reach. Does the
content work best as a video, a link back to a specially created page on your site, or otherwise?
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Remember that a very wide range of formats are available, including native, live and 360 degree
video, Instant Articles, links and photos. You can be quite creative in your approach.
Think natively in order to make the most of Facebook’s network. Consider the types of stories
that tend to work on Facebook, and their format. Native and live video offer unique ways to
connect with an audience that you may not be able to exploit on an owned site.
Facebook provide detailed guidelines on what your branded posts can and can’t include in
branded posts. Here are some notables:
• Don’t include pre, mid or post-roll ads in videos,
• Don’t include banner ads in videos or images,
• Don’t include title cards within a video’s first three seconds.If you’re using graphical overlays,
logos or watermarks included on images, they have to be approved through Facebook’s
Branded content tool first (see below).
For inspiration on promoted links,
check out the New York Times’ T
Brand Studio Facebook page, which
produces sponsored content for a
range of clients, including Cartier
and Adobe.
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For native videos, the Wall Street Journal’s Custom Studio’s page has an impressive array of clips,
focussing on their clients’ varied interests and areas of expertise.
Remember that the fundamental principles of what makes for good branded content still applies
on Facebook. Make it interesting to the audience while remaining relevant to the brand.
Publishing: Ticking All the Boxes
Once you’ve created the post or video, you’ll need to post it following Facebook’s guidelines.
Facebook’s ‘Branded Content tool’ comes into play here.
For sponsored articles, if your page has been verified by Facebook, you’ll see the branded
content tool readily available in your Facebook account, in places like the Ad Manager and
page composer. All branded posts should be posted through this tool.
To post your branded post successfully, click the handshake icon in your posting box (this is only
visible for verified pages). Type in the name of the partner page.
Then you simply add the link, image or add a video as normal. The process for Live Video is
pretty similar – see this guide for specific instructions on how to properly brand Live streams.
Once you’ve published your branded post successfully, here’s what it should look like:
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Notice the ‘with’ tag at the top of the
post. That indicates that this is branded
content, created by a verified page. If
anyone else shares this post on
Facebook, the ‘with’ tag will remain
in place.
This gives a standard level of
identification for branded content on
the network, allowing for transparency
for Facebook users, no matter what
page the post comes from.
Remember best practices when it comes to posting – tips that the editorial side of a publisher’s
team might often be more familiar with. We’ve already found that the best Facebook headlines
are conversational, interesting and don’t trick the reader. It’s especially important not to withholds
information required to understand what the content of the article is, and not to set unrealistic
expectations for the article.
Meanwhile on the accompanying post text, we found that it’s important to be succinct as possible.
You generally have around 400 characters before readers see the ‘Read More’ tag, but it’s a
good idea to come in under that threshold. In the BuzzFeed example above, they’ve kept the
tone they’re known for best, as briefly as possible.
Distribution: Getting Your Post Out There
Once the post has been approved and properly tagged, it’s time to distribute. Usually there’s
budget put behind this, which helps – but there are still best practices for distribution to adhere to.
Some publishers have set up specific Facebook pages for their branded content studios, and
many have done very well in attracting engagements on posts.
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One successful example is Mashable Studios. Their Facebook page attracted a very respectable
113,000 engagements in September 2016. Remember that that’s just engagements on the branded
content posted from that Facebook page alone. Looking in Spike, we can see a number of posts
taking off for Mashable over the past month.
In terms of reach, Facebook have this advice:
“Tagging a marketer does not impact your post’s News Feed ranking. The same signals — such
as engagement and reach — will continue to guide your post’s distribution.”
With that in mind, many of the same best practices that you see for news feed distribution apply
for branded posts. Partner pages will get a notification once the post goes live, and cross-sharing
to a wider audience is a good idea.
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With that in mind, many of the same best practices that you see for news feed distribution apply
for branded posts. Partner pages will get a notification once the post goes live, and cross-sharing
to a wider audience is a good idea.
Measuring the impact of your branded posts is an important consideration. Verified pages and
their brand partners can get unique insights for their post’s performance through Facebook
Insights, similar to the analytics available for regular posts. Careful analysis should help in figuring
out what people are responding to – helping publishers monetise their audience, and brands
connect with who they want to read and watch their content.
Branded content is something we’ll be looking at more closely on this blog in the next few
months – if you’re a brand, publisher or agency doing exciting things in the branded content
space, we’d love to hear from you.
More involved readers will pay, said Pfauth. Citing transparency and an upfront model, he said,
“We publish what we are doing with their money and people understand that it is valuable.”
BILD started their model three years ago, a freemium one. It was an editorial decision around
what you ask the reader to pay for. BILD judges every piece of content they charge for as being
something only BILD can deliver, whether it’s an exclusive story or licensed video.
Boecking said this works very well because their readers are led down the path to further articles
they are interested in. According to Mary Hamilton, The Guardian’s model is being discussed
very publicly and hasn’t been completely worked out yet.
Digital advertising for the whole industry is not rising at the level it needs to be to sustain the
industry. Scale does not seem to be the best approach. The question is “how do we get users to
pay for the journalism they find valuable?” At the moment, they’re asking people to pay to support
the Guardian right now. Hamilton said, “It’s been interesting.”
Financial Times is still a news outlet that makes a lot of money from print. In regards to their digital
model, they’ve been planning ahead for a long time due to declining ad revenue in the industry.
Therefore their subscription model is already strong.
Their model has to do with a commercial metric based on engagement, the frequency and volume.
How often do readers come back and how much content they consume when they come back?
Again, the question becomes, “How do I commission, package, distribute and promote content
that people will pay a lot of money for?” In a world where people are getting content instead
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from search and Facebook, Financial Times is figuring out how to expose potential readers to
enough to try a subscription.
Kaplan said the answer is being really clever about how they can expose readers enough to the
brand so that they’ll give Financial Times a try. Once people get exposed the conversion rate is
very good, said Kaplan. Getting them exposed is the bigger challenge.
The Vast Frontier of Social Publishing
With so much unknown still about the perfect formula for digital publishing, it’s more important
than ever for publishers to know what their audience is interacting with, and how to quickly find
the stories that will be the most successful with them.
Our publishing clients, European and beyond, use Spike, which tracks the stories, videos, and
other content that people are sharing and engaging with in real time.
Want more industry insights and best pracitces? Read more on our blog.
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