As a brand with a successful online presence, it’s important to stay on top of your social media marketing strategy. The goal is to consistently put out great content that highlights your product/services. But let’s be honest, it can get difficult to be creative all the time. Luckily there are some amazing options out there to help you, two of them being organic reposts and branded content. What’s the difference? And which one benefits/matches your strategy best? Let’s dive in.

Organic reposts

The organic repost is the more authentic option of the two, because you’re literally reposting someone else’s organic content. It’s also known as user-generated content, meaning you didn’t ask or pay them to post about your brand. It came solely from their own motivation or love for your product/service.

Given that people are very influenced by the opinions of their peers on social media, this makes an organic (re)post have all the more impact. It immediately generates way more trust and credibility than an advertisement or a paid sponsorship.

When you repost UGC on your brand’s Instagram, you open a direct path between you and your customers. You let them know that you see them, and you appreciate them.

Also: when you’re open to posting UGC on your timeline, it can be a motivator for other creators to participate and share their love. This, in turn, ensures that you have an unlimited pool of content to repost. You’ll never run out of content*.

Pro: most authentic and real

Con: you can’t fully control ugc

*Important note: You can easily repost content in your Stories, or you can ask the creator’s permission to repost their content to your timeline. Just make sure you always give credit where credit’s due.

Branded content ads

Branded content on the other hand, means any post that you create in collaboration with an influencer. If their post is in return for a payment, then it’s branded content.

In Instagram’s words: “With Branded Content ads, businesses have an opportunity to tell their brand stories through creators’ voices, reach new audiences and measure impact.”

Because you ‘hire’ the creator to promote your brand, you get more say in the creation process. We always advise to trust influencers’ creative freedom – since they are the specialists and they know their audience best -, but you are definitely allowed to lay down some rules and/orgive guidelines. You can co-create, so to say.

This makes branded content ads still way more authentic and real than traditional advertising, because you get to speak to the audience (as well as possible new consumers) directly through the influencer. This makes them receive the message as more trustworthy and credible, in comparison to when it comes from a brand.

Pro: you can control and co-create

Con: a bit less authentic, since it’s paid content

So which one is best?

In truth: you’re probably going to want to do a bit of both.

We know that social media is constantly overflowing with pictures, videos, stories… On average, we scroll through 90 meters of content a day. This makes it incredibly hard to stand out for any brand.

The best solution? A well-thought-out marketing strategy in order to create good, engaging content and stay top-of-mind.

Your best bet is to diversify your content to work for your brand, and combine the different types to work in your favor. Not only will this give you more to share, it also ensures your content will reach multiple people and might resonate with different audiences.

Need help figuring out your strategy? Influo will gladly help. Scroll through our Hub to start learning, or take a look at how we can help you.