Demystifying Paid, Owned & Earned Media: What Does that Mean to You?

By Naomi Rouff

You’ve heard the words a million times, “paid, owned and earned.” Ever thought what it means for you and your brand? If you’re new to social marketing this may seem like a big step to take into the unknown. Today, we’ll shed light on these words and help you make them part of your digital strategy.

Let’s start with paid media. When it comes to your presence online, or anywhere else for that matter, you can buy space. You can buy numerous forms of advertising, PPC, display advertising, Facebook, twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube all have ad forms of their own. Define your goals, then consider what forms of advertising will get you there.

Owned is anything you’ve created. This can (and probably should) be a long list. Your website, social media profiles and posts, blogs, video, are all part of your owned media. You made this content and should be using and promoting it as much as you can.

Last, but definitely not least, earned media. This is the good stuff. It didn’t cost you any money or time to create and can have a tremendous impact on potential customers. Whether it’s a quote by one of your founders in a large publication, a media appearance, reviews of your work, or people talking about you. Potential customers often know when they’re being advertised or sold too, which is absolutely affective but now people trust numerous sources online too. It’s not just word of mouth anymore, so if you can get people talking about and engaging with your brand online the impact will be positive.

Now you might be thinking - what does this mean for me? It means to have the most robust digital presence possible, you should be utilizing all of these forms of media. You can create content and buy advertising and by way of creating great content, products and services earned media is likely to follow.

This article was written by Naomi Rouff. Naomi is a senior account manager at Financial Social Media where she specializes in paid search advertising, SEO, internet marketing, and email marketing. - Connect with her on LINKEDIN.