How to brand your content on Facebook

Facebook recently launched Branded Content—a new type of post for pages—and changed its policies for brands that use that feature.

The shift put our agency on alert and our team dived into researching how this would affect our clients and influencers. We’ve been crafting compelling sponsored campaigns on Facebook for five years.

After researching and talking to Facebook, we collected insights to inform brands, marketers and online influencers. Here’s what you should know about the changes:

What is Facebook Branded Content?

Branded Content is a new Facebook post that lets verified pages create a special tag for content coming from a brand or sponsor. It is limited to verified pages (indicated by the blue checkmark next to their name). Facebook only accepts requests for verified status from celebrities, sports teams, public figures, media, and entertainment, but plans to accept other page types.

Branded Content posts can include text, videos, images, links, Instant Articles, 360 videos, and soon Live Videos. This will allow a more direct partnership between pages and brands for sponsored posts. If your page is verified and you post branded content, the owner (the brand) will be notified of the post and have access its analytics, as well as the ability to share it or boost it. (The brand will not have the ability to edit or delete your post.) For more on the Facebook Branded Content policies, go to Facebook.

How does this affect your Facebook marketing strategy?

The good news: Unverified pages can still share sponsored content, as long as they own the content (i.e., It lives on their blog.), even if they were compensated by a brand. This means our Massive Sway influencers can continue to work on our campaigns and to gain access to Branded Content posts without having their pages verified.

[ATTEND FROM YOUR DESK: Learn social media “next practices” from Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn.]

The bad news: Unverified pages cannot ask fans to make a purchase or share affiliate links. However, they may share a link to a blog post that promotes a product, e.g., share a recipe post that highlights Minute Rice. They also cannot share a brand’s content—for instance, content created by Minute Rice to promote their products.

How Facebook Branded Content affects influencer programs

The bottom line: While waiting for the blue checkmark verification and Branded Content to become available to all pages, influencers can continue to work on influencer campaigns and share sponsored content.

Allison Talamantez is Sway Group’s chief revenue officer. A version of this article first appeared on Sway’s blog.

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