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Let's face it: gaining an impressive following on Instagram is the dream of, well, anyone with an Instagram account. If you’re wondering how to get 10k followers on Instagram, you’re not alone—reaching that milestone is a major goal for many users looking to grow...
Oct 23, 2025
Branded content is the art of telling a story your audience actually wants to hear, building trust that performance marketing can’t buy. When creating such content, forget the hard sell. Instead, aim to create content so valuable that people would miss it if it were gone.
That being said, let’s dive into a step-by-step framework to master your branded content initiatives, complete with real-world examples to get you started. And because managing this entire process relies on an efficient content workflow, I’ll show you how to build one.
Branded content is storytelling-led marketing that prioritizes value and connection over a direct sales pitch. It refers to original or co-created stories that invite your target audience in, align with brand values, and live across video, podcasts, articles, and social mini-series. Branded content becomes the main attraction, as it’s designed to feel like a genuine story for your community.
I really like how Nadine Heir, the founder of WriteWiser, frames it. She says:
If it could be published by any brand, it’s not branded content, it’s just noise.” I believe this perfectly captures the goal of creating a genuine brand story that connects with people, rather than just putting a logo on generic content
Brands map audience passion points, then create or co-create stories with brand partners, creators, or publishers through paid partnerships. The output is multi-format:
Distribution lives on creator channels, publisher sites, and owned accounts. A useful tip here is to use platform labels in your favorite social media management tool for transparency.
Once the seed content is created, smart teams repurpose long pieces into short clips, threads, and newsletters to build a consistent brand story.
Audiences stick around because the content carries emotion, shared values, and genuine usefulness. As for success metrics, they include likes, shares, completion rate, watch time, comments, and positive sentiment, with brand-lift or traffic studies used to validate long-term impact.
Daniel Priestley shares the 7-11-4 framework: 7 hours, 11 interactions, 4 touchpoints to build strong audience bonds.
To make the idea of building a loyal social media community more tangible, I often turn to a framework developed by entrepreneur Daniel Priestley called the 7-11-4 rule. Originally for networking, it has been brilliantly adapted for the digital age and provides a clear roadmap for branded content. It states that to build a real bond, people need to spend 7 hours with you, across 11 interactions, in 4 different locations (or channels).
Here’s how I’ve seen this translate to branded content:
It’s the cumulative time an audience spends with your brand. This could be a 2-hour webinar, a season of ten 30-minute podcast episodes, or a library of in-depth video tutorials.
These are the touchpoints where your brand shows up in their world. It might be seeing an Instagram post, reading your email newsletter, watching a YouTube video, getting a reply to their comment, and then seeing a targeted ad.
This is about being multi-platform in a strategic way. Your audience needs to see you in different contexts, for example, on their LinkedIn feed (professional), in their email inbox (personal), on your blog (educational), and on TikTok (entertaining).
As a content marketer, I’ve noticed people often use these terms interchangeably, but from my professional experience, they serve completely different strategic purposes.
It’s important to distinguish them because how they feel to an audience is fundamentally different, and choosing the right one depends entirely on your goal. This simple breakdown helps keep things clear:
Don’t think of this approach as a decision framework for choosing a format, but as allocating resources to a strategic intent. Ask yourself if the business goal requires you to:
Then choose your lever for building brand equity.
I’ve learned that the most powerful marketing doesn’t feel like marketing at all. We’ve all seen this approach work for brands across the board, but a great example I often point to is Nude Project.
Their Instagram feed is a masterclass in this philosophy. You won’t see their logo plastered everywhere. Instead, you find a carefully curated world of art, aesthetics, and emotion. They’re selling a feeling, and the clothing is just a souvenir you can take home from that world.
Here are the 5 biggest benefits I believe this approach delivers:
Nude Project builds organic reach with cultural relevance, artist collabs, and social-first product storytelling.
The best content is something people choose to engage with, not something they’re forced to see. It’s something so valuable or resonant that the audience does the distribution for you.
As brand founder Lynzee Krohne says:
Branded content is the type of content that invites people in, builds trust and loyalty, and gives potential customers something to feel, not just buy.
Such an approach brings organic audience engagement and earned media in their purest form, which builds brand awareness that feels authentic, not manufactured.
Nike’s Instagram showcases powerful imagery, athlete stories, and consistency that reinforces global brand trust.
In a noisy market, clarity is a superpower. Branded content gives you the space to define what you stand for beyond the products you sell. It’s your opportunity to have a point of view.
Copywriter and brand expert Nadine Heir calls it:
a chance to actually say something – ideally something worth listening to.
Take Nike, for example. When they say “something”, it’s in their choice of images, their color palette, their celebration of athletic greatness, or a stand on social issues. They are consistently communicating a value system and choosing partners who match it.
Over time, that consistency compounds. It builds a powerful, positive brand perception and, as Nadine suggests, creates long-term brand favor.
Duolingo blends humor and learning in TikTok content that drives viral engagement and brand relatability.
Impressions and likes are often just vanity metrics. The magic is in the actions that show someone truly connects with what you’re creating, consisting of meaningful online and offline interactions.
When Lynzee Krohne said:
Content saves, shares, and DM replies have told us more about what’s working than impressions ever could.
When you look at the social media comments on a piece of resonant branded content, you see more than those 🔥 emojis. You see conversations, people tagging friends, and genuine emotional reactions. People save the content for later inspiration.
These are the signals of true audience engagement, AKA signs that your content has become a part of their world. A good example of that, although cliché by now, is Duolingo. Their peak era audience engagement was unmatched.
Ahrefs keyword generator helps marketers identify high-volume, relevant search terms to improve SEO visibility.
The impact of great branded content on SEO is one of the most powerful, yet misunderstood, benefits. A strong branded content strategy framework can become a powerful engine for SEO, as high-quality stories, whether in video or written form, naturally earn backlinks or plain brand mentions from reputable sources. They keep people on your site longer, which signals to Google that you’re a valuable resource.
But this approach grows branded search volume too. Think of brands like Ahrefs, which essentially built an SEO empire by becoming one of the most valuable educational resources in their space. Their discoverability is partly a direct result of their content’s quality.
This approach creates a sustainable loop:
One of the biggest limiters for any brand is bandwidth. You simply can’t create all the content needed to be everywhere at once. But your story can be. The key is to scale through collaboration with the right brand partners. You don’t have to build your brand’s universe alone.
One of the most effective strategies I’ve seen is co-creating content with trusted brand partners or creators who already inhabit the world you’re trying to build.
But this approach doesn’t work if you’re borrowing credibility alone. You must add your authentic voice and expert advice to the narrative. When collaborating, you keep your brand story consistent while scaling it across different formats and channels. It’s a way to expand your reach without diluting your message, making your world feel even bigger and more inviting.
Measuring the impact of branded content is a tough job. Content Marketing Institute data shows 48% of enterprise marketers feel they measure performance effectively. That same research reveals that 63% struggle to attribute ROI to their efforts.
The solution is to build a measurement framework that looks at the full story: the immediate audience intent, the long-term behavioral shifts, and how it all compares to past performance. You do that by focusing on the right data for each part of your content workflow, as such:
If you want to build brand awareness, measure if you’ve successfully entered the conversation.
For goals like building community and changing brand perception (like when you add a new service to your portfolio), you need proof of resonance.
For lead generation or sales goals, you must connect the feeling your content creates to a tangible business result.
Tying all of this together is where a tool like Planable becomes invaluable. With Planable Analytics, you can track your historical social engagement data and create auto-generated reports to show stakeholders not just what happened, but how it stacks up against our previous efforts. Sharing this via a single link makes demonstrating progress incredibly straightforward.
Creating branded content that genuinely connects is both a coincidental (we all remember a TikTok we spent 2 minutes on and went viral) and a repeatable, strategic process. So, follow this 5-step framework to make your content marketing efforts happen:
The foundation of great content is deep empathy, which begins when you stop talking about yourself and start listening to the market. Most resonant content solves a real problem and touches on the real pain points, passions, interests, and cultural relatability of your customer base. It’s usually not the ad your sales department asked you to push out. Those may end up being shut down by ad blockers.
If you want to uncover good content, your best data is not necessarily in a market research paper. Here’s how to find it:
George Danaila, Planable’s Content Marketing Manager, points out that the goal is to create that: “I see myself in this” reaction, which is only possible when you speak directly to a real, felt need. So, the goal is to build an empathy map that details what your audience truly thinks, feels, and struggles with, then find the intersection between their passions and your brand’s values.
Once you understand your audience, frame your message as a narrative. In great branded content, the product is the mentor or the tool, but the consumers are always the hero.
When asked about this, George Danaila said that the recipe is “authenticity, relatability, and value”, noting that “human-centered stories are more relevant than ever.”
In psychology, we learn a common yet simple story structure. You introduce a relatable character facing a common challenge (the conflict). Then, you show how a new perspective or tool helps them succeed (the resolution).
But a story isn’t just told with words. It’s a complete sensory experience built on consistency.
As brand expert Nadine Heir states, the essential elements are:
a clear message, a brand voice, and a reason to care.
This must be reflected in everything from your copy to your visuals. Think of a brand like Blake Lively’s Betty Buzz. To build that kind of brand familiarity, you need consistency in:
Your brand’s story could gain more power when told by others, shows traditional advertising. Brands partner with creators, stars, influencers, and experts for a reason. The key is to think in terms of long-term brand partners, not just one-off influencers that promote various offerings all the time.
Instead of a single product placement, co-develop a multi-part series with a creator that explores a topic your audience genuinely cares about. For example, a software company could partner with a respected project manager on a YouTube series about the future of project management. This provides far more value and builds deeper trust than traditional ads, like a simple sponsored post.
A powerful story shouldn’t be confined to a single channel or format. The most effective branded content initiatives create an entire ecosystem around a central theme. They allow the audience to engage on their preferred platform.
Think of it as a repurposing engine model. Start with one large “content pillar” piece, like a detailed research report or a webinar. Then, repurpose it into smaller assets.
For example, a single webinar can be turned into:
As long as each piece stands on its own while enriching the larger narrative and gives your audience multiple ways to explore your brand’s world, it does the job.
Effective measurement tells you what to do next. It fuels a smarter creative cycle.
The ultimate test is whether your audience feels a connection. Lynzee Krohne, Co-owner and Founder @LEO + LAINE, says:
Your audience should feel seen. Understood. Inspired.
So, your social media metrics should reflect this.
Your analytics are the best source for your next creative prompts. For example, if you see high engagement on a post about team productivity, use Planable’s AI to generate new ideas with a prompt like:
Our post on reducing meeting times was a top performer. Generate 5 new content angles that explore this pain point, including a humorous video script and a LinkedIn poll.
The gap between a brilliant branded content marketing idea and a flawless live campaign is filled with chaotic spreadsheets, endless email threads, and misunderstood feedback (IFYKYK). Let me show you how you can fix that:
It starts with having a single space to draft every asset. With Universal Content, you can outline your main video script, write the accompanying blog post, and draft all the social media captions in one go. When you hit a creative block, the built-in Planable AI can act as a creative partner, generating new ideas and rewriting captions to perfection.
Enhance copy with Planable’s AI writing assistant for punchier, shorter, or more creative social captions.
And if you want to see exactly how each post will look with pixel-perfect previews for all 9 social platforms, well… you can. Whether you need to perfect your Instagram grid or check a YouTube thumbnail, there are no surprises.
The real magic, however, is in the collaboration process. Instead of vague feedback, stakeholders can leave real-time comments and annotations directly on the content. To eliminate confusion and bottlenecks, you can build custom, multi-level approval workflows to ensure everyone gets access and signs off in the right order.
Planable’s feedback tool enables quick internal collaboration and real-time client approvals on post designs.
Great branded content campaigns are more than just a series of posts. In Planable, you can group all your assets into campaigns and visualize your entire strategy. The ability to switch between calendar, feed, and list views gives you the perfect perspective for any task, whether you need a high-level overview or want to schedule social media posts in bulk.
Track campaigns visually in Planable with post previews, briefs, and performance insights like reach and engagement.
Finally, once your content is live, you can close the loop by tracking what works with Planable’s built-in analytics and sharing progress with auto-generated reports. That’s how you’ll make every campaign smarter than the next one.
Branded content works when it feels human. Pick one story, one partner, one series, then measure what earns saves and replies. Ready to make it real?
Try Planable and get 50 free posts on sign-up. Draft in Universal Content, preview for 9 social networks, gather comments, approve, and schedule in one calendar. Give your team a place to create, align, and ship work your users choose to follow.
Maria is a content marketer, SEO copywriter, and social media specialist with experience working for a wide range of B2B businesses. She loves to keep up with the evolution of digital marketing, particularly in areas such as social media management, content, SEO, and PR. She is passionate about her work and loves to add a unique spin to any topic.
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