How Brand Content Can Boost Your Business

In a world full of advertisement and information, how can you make your brand to stand out? Here we are going to talk more about how to use this amazing consumer-focused technique and how to make your business grow.

What is Brand Content?

Branded Content is simply any type of content that can be associate with a brand. It can be a videos, podcast, text, tutorials, infographics, etc. and should create value to the customer/audience. It should not be regarded as traditional advertising at all and that it crosses more into editorial content that has to do with a brand.

And the challenge starts with the name: or it's brand or it's content. Most of the companies try to have both, but at the end, they only deliver normal advertisement. In order to create an effective brand content you must concentrate in your biggest strengths, your personality as a brand, and actually think what can really entertain your audience.

What Should you Talk About?

It depends about who you are. Remember that brand is much more than name and logo, is about your purpose and values. For example, a company with zero inclusion programs, where most of employees are white men, creates out of nowhere a campaign about Black Lives Matter or about feminism. Big chances the audience will see that they are only trying to make money out of a legit social problem. Customers are smart nowadays and very aware about everything.

You do not necessarily need to talk about social problems, if that's not part of your identity. You can, and should, create social programs but don't try to teach others if you don't do it well yourself.

If you are a tech company, for example, talk about innovation in digital era, teach young professionals how to boost their careers and how business can use technology to make more money.

But if you are a tech company, who designs sustainable softwares, and plant trees, and are partners with local NGOs, make sustainability part of your brand content too. Talk about how technology can make a better world. Can you see the difference?

How to Create Good Brand Content?

Let's look at this example:

Imagine you went for a night out, a dinner with friends and some friends of friends. There is this one guy at the table (we all know this guy) talking only about himself non-stoping — "I know that, I did that, I won many awards, I travelled to that place, I help those people, blablabla". Unbearable right? That's bad advertisement.

Imagine a second guy now, who is sharing knowledge and telling engaging stories. He might have a good smile too. He gives you space to talk, to make questions, to give your own examples. That's good brand content.

How to Make Money With Brand Content?

Let’s think about this second guy as a lawyer. It’s not because he is a nice guy that you are going to hire him. But is someone that you are going to have a good memory of, someone you would like to invite for the next dinner. So maybe, in a couple of years if you need a lawyer, big chances that you are going to remember him and even trust him to do the work. That’s how brand content can make your business grow.

The metrics are super complicated, and you might even track how many times your brand was mentioned, how many followers, comments, etc. But you can not measure the impact you cause in people. Brand content does not sell immediately. Brand content creates connection.

Examples of Brand Content

During the first year of Netflix original series, Orange is the New Black, Netflix wrote an article about women inmates in the United States prison system, and the challenges they experience while being incarcerated. They mentioned the show only once as part of the article (and it made completely sense the mention) and was definitely not focused on it.

You know you’ve succeeded at branded content when people are having so much fun, they don’t even notice they’re being marketed to.

The hilarious and surprisingly clever Lego Movie earned a worldwide total of over $469 million, all the while promoting Lego to a new global generation of kids.

Small brands can invest in sharing stories and information on their social media platforms or in a local level that is obviously much less expensive than the examples above.

Conclusion

So, as a brand strategist, for most of the cases, I would advise you to invest on both. Tradicional advertisement for your products, sales, promotions, awards, etc and Brand Content to create a deeply connection with people. So they will remember you, they will like you, they will believe you are good. They might even recommend you without ever being a client.

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