By Chantal India, on 10 November 2022
Instagram is a very powerful tool for connecting with an engaging and responsive community. According to Instagram data, more than 80% of its users follow some type of brand on the platform.
This makes Instagram one of the best networks to collaborate with influencers. With branded content on Instagram, collaborating with creators and launching your own campaigns is very easy. Learn more in this article!
How to Create a Branded Content Strategy on Instagram
Branded content on Instagram is any content published by a creator that has been paid for by a brand. More specifically, a creator receives compensation in the form of products or cash in exchange for publishing content.
Whenever creators receive something of value in exchange for posting content, they are legally required to disclose the collaboration with the brand. To facilitate this process, Instagram has a specific branded content tool to tag paid collaborations and facilitate the relationship between brands and influencers.
To define your branded content strategy on Instagram, you have to be clear about your brand's personality and who you are targeting. To do this, we recommend starting by defining the content you are going to publish: topics, style, frequency of posts, guidelines for interacting with other accounts, and more.
When this is clear, you can start looking for creator accounts that fit well with your brand's personality that address your target audience. Choosing the right influencer is critical to a successful collaboration, so don't hesitate to spend as much time as necessary on this step.
When looking for creators to make branded content, try to focus on quality rather than quantity. The most important thing isn’t the total number of followers, but rather the levels of interaction and the ability to influence your target audience. The current trend is to look for "micro-influencers", that is, people who have fewer followers but are very influential in a specific niche.
How to Find Brand Contributors on Instagram
Instagram and Facebook have specific brand collaboration tools for advertisers to find popular creators to promote their products.
The brand collaborators manager helps you find the most suitable creators for your brand, get information about their audience, and reach collaboration agreements. With this tool, you can:
- Search for creators who meet your criteria. The content creators in the tool have already passed quality and brand safety checks and have loyal audiences as well as active followers. You can also post a description of your project to receive requests from creators who meet your requirements. Although it’s still advisable to do your own research on each creator, the truth is that these filters can make your brand's job much easier.
- Segment creators according to their target audience. Facebook's collaboration manager offers detailed information about a creator's followers, so you can quickly identify those who best fit your buyer persona.
- Speed up the entire collaboration process to launch campaigns faster. This tool helps you locate creators you're interested in, get permission to extend the reach of their posts with Facebook Ads, and manage your branded content on Instagram and Facebook from a unified dashboard.
How to Launch Campaigns With the Branded Content Tool on Instagram
The branded content tool on Instagram offers multiple options for brands that facilitate the whole process of launching and managing a campaign:
- Approve branded content contributors on Instagram. With the branded content tool, you can control who can tag you as a branded collaboration. Once you've reached an agreement with a content creator, you can go to your Instagram business account settings and approve that person as a branded content partner. They will then be able to tag posts where they talk about your brand with a direct link to your Instagram account, making it easier for their followers to discover you.
- View statistics about your branded content. The branded content insights feature allows you to track the metrics of Instagram posts that your brand has been tagged in. This way, you can get a detailed view of the content published by influencers and adapt your strategy accordingly. If an influencer has tagged you in a post, you will be able to see data such as interactions and reach for an unlimited amount of time. If they have tagged you in a Story, you will be able to see reach, clicks, exits, and responses for 14 days after the post.
- Launch branded content ads. To maximize the results of influencer posts, Instagram recommends combining branded content strategies with Instagram Ads to increase reach and ROI. With the branded content tool on Instagram, you can turn your collaborators' posts into ads. Just remember to make sure that the creator has given you permission to promote the content and that the content meets Instagram's ad requirements.
- Measure the performance of branded content ads. Once you've launched your branded content ads, you can view the results with Ads Manager. With it, you can track the most important metrics and compare the performance of branded content and other types of ads.
