5 Tips for Driving Earned Media

According to Forrester Industry Analyst Sean Corcoran, media can be classified as owned, paid or earned:

• Owned Media is delivered from a company to a consumer through channels controlled by the brand.  This includes things such as emailing or texting opt-in subscribers, sending a tweet to your followers or showing a video to visitors on your site.  The advantages are that it’s inexpensive and the audience is familiar with, and likely receptive to, the message.

• Paid Media differs from Owned Media because the channel is rented instead of owned.  The advantage of Paid Media is that (budget permitting) you have control of who and how many people get to see your message.  Paid media allows you to reach new consumers and convert them over to your owned media channels.

• Earned Media is the holy grail of all media.  The message is passed from consumer to consumer carrying with it an implied endorsement, making it incredibly impactful and best of all FREE.

Here are five tips for leveraging earned media:

1. Enable sharing within Paid and Owned Media

For example, instead of using a proprietary video player on your site, consider using YouTube or Vimeo.  This will make your content accessible to a much wider audience, and many of the social and sharing buttons are already built into the player.

Use Facebook integration to tie your website and display ads to the social networking world. This makes it easy for existing fans of the brand to spread the word to their social networks.

2. Create helpful content

Many brands don’t think twice about spending $200k producing a TV commercial, but would balk at the idea of spending $100k on an iPhone app. Giving customers content that is useful and applicable can be far more effective than a billboard or TV ad.



3. Enable personalization

Almost everybody’s favorite word is their own name, and people love to see pictures (or videos) of themselves, so it shouldn’t surprise you that ads that enable personalization get shared at much higher rates.

Interactive augmented reality also allows customers to control an online experience, engaging on a far more personal level with your brand.

4. Use incentives and social pressure

Remember those spam emails telling you if you forwarded the email to a certain number of people you’d get a check from Bill Gates?  Well, now thanks to sites like Groupon (www.groupon.com) and Homerun (www.homerun.com) these forwarded emails might provide real financial benefits to both the sender and receiver.  So instead of trying to restrict the number of coupons that get out in the marketplace, enable them to spread virally. When calculating ROI, think of the media investment that would have been required to get a similar level of engagement and consideration from potential customers.



5. Humor

When all else fails, make them laugh.

Have you tried any of these five tips? What are some other things you have done to engage customers with Earned Media?

Tagged as: Augmented Reality, earned media, facebook, iPhone 3G, Online Communities, online coupons, owned media, paid media, Sean Corcoran, Social network, television, YouTube