In the ever changing worlds of content marketing and Google, having a content strategy combining owned, paid and earned media is becoming more and more important. Making sure your strategy covers these three areas allows your brand, your content and your authority to grow throughout the web.
Owned media
What is owned media? Pretty simple. It’s your website, blog, social media and any other channel of media that your company owns and controls. Whether it’s web content, blogs, whitepapers, articles or any other forms of content that you have created, the first place to put it is on your own media.
Why owned media?
Owned media is important because without it there would be no way for your prospects to learn about you and start to trust you as a business or person. Owned media is the heart of your company. It feeds the information and content needs of current customers, as well as prospects that already know you.
But how do you expand and get your content see beyond that limited audience range? Finding new people is essential.
Paid media
What is paid media? Again, pretty simple. It’s media that you pay for – to gain distribution, audience and views. In the past, paid media centered around skyscraper or cube ad unit on websites. Now it encompasses Pay-Per-Click (PPC) approaches through platforms like Google Adwords, Facebook or Bing.
Why paid media? Using paid media can help fill in the gaps of the (Not Provided) alert in Google Analytics. Any way you can understand how your customers find you is valuable and becomes a competitive advantage for your content marketing strategy. Sometimes called Native advertising, this is a great way to get in front of your demographic. Using companies like Outbrain can keep your cost down but increase views of relevant content.
Earned media
What is earned media? Earned media is an extension of word-of-mouth advertising, and refers specifically to publicity gained through editorial influence.
Why earned media? Google likes to see these types of “sharing” indicators and will actually award your website with better search results due to the type of earned media you receive. Done through social media, earned media makes sure your content gets shared, and it is important for growth and upward movement in search results.
Having a content strategy is important to any online marketing plan. Using all three types of media to round out your approach will give your business a competitive edge in the online world.
