Credit: Juicy Agency blog
Everywhere the terms owned media, earned media and paid media are popping up. If you’re not familiar with these as a b-to-b marketer, it’s time to understand why these types of media are a necessary part of your strategy.
Earned Media
As a public relations practitioner with media relations expertise, we get coverage or stories for businesses in media. This is called earned media. For business-to-business marketing, PR is a critical strategy for campaign results. If you’d like to learn why, please ask in comments.
Paid Media
This is the coverage and ink you buy, like advertising. Everyone knows the value this brings, especially when larger budgets are available.
Owned Media
When you create and publish your own content, you own it. It’s called owned media. Think of the blog you write for your company, client or yourself. The words are yours, and you publish them on a self-hosted website (hopefully). The ideation to create these inspiring words is yours, too.
Ownership of your words; it sounds so pizzazzy and smart.
In the chaotic world that is social business and social marketing today, there is one pathway tried and true – owned media. No one says it’s easy street to publish content, but it’s a surefire way to garner attention for your smart words.
And, with a consistent publishing schedule, you can develop a rich archive of owned media – stories you’ve written with your byline.
For Small-to-Medium Business
Owned media for small business is a way to level the playing field. You have a chance to differentiate your products and services in a nimble and expedient way. You can take an industry issue and get out front with counsel to clients and peers. You can become a thought leader with refreshed content that can only boost your presence, brand and positioning.
Level of difficulty? For sure, you need to know what you’re doing before you launch. Blogging, publishing regular newsletters and becoming a thought leader is not for the faint of heart – being consistent with content marketing is critical to success.
Larger Business
There are a variety of social marketing channels to engage with customers; as a larger business, you’re likely aware and already engaging.
If you’re not already owning content and pushing it on a blog or news center on your site, then you’re missing an opportunity to be an authority. There are many, many blog posts written “proving” blogs are dead. Heck, everything dies and comes back to life with inspiration and creativity. Look at bell bottom jeans, for goodness sake!
Marketing departments are often hard pressed to publish consistently; yet, when it happens, brands benefit. This type of strategic approach to owned media and content marketing is exactly what the doctor orders.
Your business-to-business marketing strategy is incomplete without it. Ask me why.
This is really well put Jayme. Owned media is something every SMB should embrace. Without your own meaningful content the Net might just move on without you.
@jonbuscall Jon, great having your comment; appreciate it! Looking forward to our next chat!
Jayme, if you haven’t already, I would love to see you do a post on each of these. I still struggle to understand them. Sometimes they still feel like buzz words even though they are standards now. Would love a practical, no fluff, discussion of them.
@susansilver Thank you, Susan. I think I will! Didn’t expect any comments on this post, but I can see there is interest. I appreciate you saying so!
See? You have gone and proven the social experiment with respect to blogging light fluffy content versus serious business related content. I got exactly one comment (thanks bdorman264 you the man) on my last post. I wasn’t expecting any comments at all. Now, the topic is very specific to my industry and by the traffic it tells me that people are reading but won’t comment. Huh.
This interests me here because to me owned media in the form of an interactive platform is valuable because you can get feedback and actually “learn” from the discourse. I am sure ginidietrich does this very strategically (yeah, I am baiting her – bad boy). The first two, earned and paid cost you directly. The latter has a cost but the benefit to education seems immeasurable. THAT sounds like a solid benefit to advance owned media in a big way.
So, why is owned media so important to you?
@rdopping I don’t totally agree. Paid media definitely has an out-of-pocket expense, but earned media does not. It takes some time and elbow grease, but it’s relationship building with influencers…something you’re VERY good at doing.
And yes, I do our owned media very strategically. It could be the foundation for a book, showing our thinking to a prospect, or doing the research necessary to implement a new idea for a client.
@ginidietrich @rdopping Gini is one to watch; you can learn so much in re her strategic approach to everything and her transparency about the lessons along the way. She learns from you, too; go back and read some of those posts, you’ll see (Ralph).
@Soulati | B2B Social Media Marketing @rdopping Who is this @ginidietrich is she new? Think she needs some advice from us?
@ginidietrich Gee thanks. If you need a research assistant for that book let me know.
@rdopping bdorman264 ginidietrich Great job, Ralph! You’re pulling a Soulati, for sure!
Agree with Gini, earned media requires fees to practitioners or teams; people often call it “free,” which I hate. For sure, it’s ink that has been chosen to get published by others vs. paid which you indeed need to fork $$ for.
Owned media importance? Goes without saying, you control the message, absolute. How better can that be?
@rdopping I’m just a ho; I’ll show up anywhere……..