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TRAINER: SYED TALHA BIN RASHID CERTIFIED DIGITAL MARKETER + SEO + WORDPRESS DEVELOPER
But today, there is (and should be) little distinction between media types.
These assets serve as the foundation to make all of your paid, earned and shared channels work. You can’t
launch a campaign without telling a story or sharing a message.
It’s estimated by Gartner that customers will manage 85% of their relationship with a company without ever
talking to a human. Additionally, the GE Shopper Research study states that 81% of consumers research a
product or service online before purchasing. The way that most of your customers will first communicate
with you is through your business’s owned media (even copy and creative assets in a paid ad are
considered owned media), making it the most critical component of this model.
First steps
Aside from the cost of resources to create content, owned media is free. But depending on your
organization’s goals and team size, content creation could be a budget buster. To build a library of owned
content, look into options such as hiring internally, recruiting freelancers, or working with an agency. Or
develop a combination of the three.
Then, document a content strategy, which will help you understand your brand’s audience personas, the
keywords to target, what topics and types of content to create, the platforms where you’ll publish content and
how to measure performance.
Once a trusty and productive team is in place and there’s more content in the queue, you’ll be able to
determine how content will be used in the rest of your channels.
Shared media
There’s no doubt that we love to create acronyms and memorable terms in this industry. It’s perhaps why
shared media was added, so we could say “PESO” instead of “PEO.” Regardless, shared media is a crucial
addition and a component that hardly existed for brands a decade ago.
Shared media could be considered a sector of owned media because you own the content that is published
to your social media platforms. However, each social platform has its own quirks and characteristics that
require different content and campaigns.
Understanding these nuances of the platforms and what segments of your audience are on each will help
dictate the owned media you create.
Online word-of-mouth
Once you share something to your social media channels, what happens next is out of your hands. The
engagements, comments and shares your content receives is up to your audience. It’s online word-of-mouth,
so you lose the ability to control exactly who is sharing your content, what they’re saying about it and where
it’s happening.
The slightest mistake can turn into a viral post that could be damaging to your brand. Take this example of
DiGiorno Pizza. They posted a tweet that misused a trending hashtag, proving that they probably didn’t do
their research before hitting “publish.”
But when a social media campaign is well-received, the results can be rewarding. When it comes to shared
media, the social posts you craft are just part of the equation. In many cases, owned, earned AND paid
media can all turn into shared media if people find the content worth talking about and sharing with others.
It’s a powerful way to spread awareness of your brand, gain new followers and even generate new
customers.
In her 2023 update, Gini Dietrich focuses on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn, but reminds us not
to ignore other channels like Reddit, Pinterest or TikTok. Allow yourself space to test content on these
platforms to see how your brand performs.
Earned Media
Traditionally, earned media is a PR pitch sent to a journalist who may include the brand in a featured story or
mention it in an article in some way, whether it’s a print or online publication. In this sense, earned media is
all about relationship building.
In addition, they’re sending pitches to editors and webmasters of relevant websites inquiring about including
a backlink to a piece of owned content or to contribute a guest post (which usually includes a link or two back
to the brand’s website).
This enhances the authority and credibility of your business to audiences — and to Google, which rewards
backlinks by boosting the rank of content in SERPs.
In this sense, search engine optimization is an earned media play. Though there are more than 200 factors
that Google assesses to rank content, securing quality backlinks from websites with a high domain authority
that are trusted by the public is a critical factor to boost rankings.
It takes more time and energy to secure earned media, and even when you earn placements, it often is
locked behind a paywall. It’s why PR and marketing professionals are supplementing their outreach strategy
with paid media solutions.
Paid Media
Paid media has quickly become your best strategy for better targeting and control of who is seeing your
content. It’s how you’ll get your owned content seen among the saturated online landscape — put it right in
front of their faces.
Typically centered on pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on Google or a local newspaper website, paid media
tactics now rely largely on native advertising. Native ads are media placements that fit the form and function
of the surrounding editorial content on a webpage. It should look “native” to the page. This post explains the
difference between native advertising and sponsored content.
The ad links to sponsored, owned or earned media — really, anything your brand wants people to read. Here
are examples of three popular native advertising types, and the pros and cons of each:
It’s also a great tool for A/B testing content. Before promoting a post, see which ones perform well organically
first. There’s also no fixed pricing so you can promote sponsored posts as your budget allows. Take into
consideration that you may still reap earned benefits of a paid post even after the end of its lifespan. If users
shared the post in their own feeds, it could still receive views and engagement.
3. Sponsored Content
Sponsored content is also considered a type of native advertising because it fits the form and function of its
host, but it’s not an ad. It’s a longer-form piece of brand-sponsored content such as an article or video that
lives on a media publisher’s site. According to this Moz blog post, “Brands value this because association
with a publication and exposure to its audience can drive awareness, traffic, conversions and leads.”
The content is not about the brand, but rather a related topic. If you’re selling eco-friendly napkins, your
article won’t be about how your company was founded. Rather, it’ll list five tips for going green while eating
out. Your article will only have one or two brand mentions throughout.
Sponsored content is less in-your-face. Because it looks and reads just like the other articles on the hosted
website and provides valuable information, readers will feel more inclined to engage with it. This forms a
more favorable view of your brand.
MAT releases are still a tried-and-true content distribution method, used mainly to increase brand awareness.
Unlike paying one fee to host content on a publisher’s website, you pay for a MAT release to be distributed
through a vendor (like Brandpoint), and the article is then placed within the publications in that vendor’s
content distribution network.
Editors also have the opportunity to choose content from brands to fill space when needed, which turns the
MAT release into an earned media property as well. To further capitalize on this placement, you can share a
published MAT release with your social media followers.