Owned media is created and maintained by a company for its own recognition and use. It is within complete control of the company itself. What are other forms of media that brands should consider?

Earned Media

Earned media is not paid for with money, but with time and energy. This is potentially the most powerful form and is most trusted because it is the unsolicited opinions of our peers based on personal understanding or experience. Impressions that generate this are longer lasting than other forms of media which are only exposed for a defined time period. It is a result of brand behavior and is ultimately controlled by consumers—fans or critics.

Focusing on leveraging customers to help circulate awareness and promote a positive brand message is key to establishing and managing ongoing earned media. Because of internet accessibility and how broad social media’s ever-growing scope has expanded, virtually everything we do has the potential to affect this. There are many web analytics tools available today, like IP intelligence, page tagging, bounce rate, or email response rate, that make it possible to measure the effectiveness of earned media.

Examples of earned media include public relations, social media, blogs, word-of-mouth, or YouTube.

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