What is A Earned Media Website
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Introduction
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There are three types of media: earned, owned and paid. Paid media is anything you paid for, such as a sponsored post in a magazine, a social media ad or an influencer’s post. Owned media is content that you’ve created or distribution channels that you control. For example, a blog post on your website, a social media post from your account or a newsletter. Some people add a fourth type of media, social media or shared media, to separate out the social media channels. Earned media stands out from these two because it’s media that you don’t and can’t control. Examples of earned media include an Instagram mention when someone visits your shop, an unsolicited Yelp review and even a reshare of your blog post.
The Value of Earned Media
Nowadays, earned media has become greatly valuable. Modern consumers are more influenced by recommendations from family and friends and by content that they read online. The advances in technology have made it much easier for people to broadcast their opinions about certain products or services in front of a worldwide, captive audience.
More individuals also do their own research and this greatly influences their purchasing decisions.
A Nielsen research study found that 85 percent of consumers find credible third-party write-ups when considering a purchase, while 69 percent of consumers read product reviews written by experts before making a purchase decision. Another 67 percent of consumers agree that unbiased endorsements from unaffiliated third-party experts are more likely to make them purchase a product or avail of a service.
This shows that expert content, a form of earned media, has a lot of influence in several aspects of a purchase cycle.
SEO also plays a role in adding to the value of earned media. Content “freshness” can influence where your page lands in SERPs. Earned media is a great resource for having consistently fresh content about your business. It can also give you more backlinks from authoritative pages that can boost your rankings.
Examples of earned media
1. Original social media posts referencing your product
Instead of sharing content that your brand has created, customers or fans of your company may promote your brand for free by writing about their experience with your product or service in an original social media post. When a customer tweets about “the best brunch ever!” at a restaurant and the post gets several likes and retweets, that’s earned media.
2. Online customer reviews
While being mentioned in a positive way can be great for your business, it’s also important to keep in mind that earned media is also that bad Yelp review from a different customer who had “the worst brunch ever” at that same restaurant. In the past few years, the way customers express their feelings about products they’ve used has changed and is no longer limited to just dinner conversations and phone calls. Now, when people come across a product (whether they love or hate it), they make it known to the world by writing reviews on websites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Amazon, Google Reviews, and more. Each one of those reviews about your business is earned media.
3. Product reviews on YouTube, social media, or blogs
Reviews about your products or services call attention to your brand and let potential customers know about you. If they are positive reviews, they can lead directly to increased sales. Conversely, bad reviews can negatively impact your bottom line. For example, a technology blogger might write a review post on the “Top 10 Apps of 2021”, and include your recently launched mobile app. If that post is viewed and shared by tens of thousands of people, it can significantly boost your profits.
4. Media coverage of your products, services, brand, or events
When earned media comes as a result of press coverage, it will often be in the form of a direct reference to your business or brand. Just look at how much buzz the Tesla marketing strategy is generating with basically a $0 budget. But, it’s also possible for you to benefit from the same tangential incorporation in much the same way as you would with YouTube or social media posts.
5. Natural inclusion of your products or services into external media
For the most part, even when content producers aren’t explicitly setting out to bring attention to your brand, products, services, you can still get free publicity and earned media whenever your company’s goods are incorporated in their video or image. This is especially beneficial if the video or image shows the participants in a great environment or having a good time using (or simply in the presence of) your products or brand.
6. Word-of-mouth recommendations
Word-of-mouth is yet another example of earned media. It’s just as impactful as a Yelp review or tweet – and it’s free!. This type of earned media can be stimulated through social media, viral marketing and digital8. It includes day-to-day conversations between happy customers and others who are looking for a product or service like yours. One example of positive earned media through word-of-mouth recommendations is when people talk about your upcoming webinar and share it with their network of friends on social media.
7. Unpaid search engine traffic
This example is a bit tricky to define because earned media typically comes in the form of written or video content. But, organic traffic that strictly results from your website’s natural ranking without paid placement is a type of earned media. You’ve “earned” traffic to your content by ranking highly on search engines. The content within the search results is linked to your owned media, but the generation of search engine traffic for keywords, aside from direct searches for your business, is an excellent example of earned media. Which brings up a very important question: Is SEO earned media?. The answer is no. SEO isn’t technically earned media.
It’s a process that you control in order to improve the performance of your media. But, you can still “earn” search engine traffic from your optimization efforts, which makes organic traffic a type of earned media – even though the content itself is classified as owned media.
8. Inclusion in a trade publication
If your business is included in a trade publication geared toward an industry that you are an active part of, this qualifies as earned media. Although such publications have a somewhat smaller reach, they often have a very high value per impression since they offer free placement in front of your target audience. For instance, a business that has developed a new method for composting might be featured in a magazine that’s all about sustainability, making it likely that the readers who make up the business’s target audience will learn about the innovative brand.
9. Product roundups
Content creators love to create “roundup” articles with a list of the best types of products for customers seeking high-quality items. If your product or service is good enough, it’s likely that someone will want to include it in their roundup, which would result in earned media for your business. For example, a car seat manufacturer that develops a safer harness for a lower price could wind up in an article called “9 Best Infant Car Seats of 2021 for Parents on a Budget“.
