via socialmediagraphics.posterous.com
Considered-Purchase Brands should understand the choices of unpaid media channels available and add them to their marketing mix if they want to lower their costs and increase their audience’s engagement faster.
Think about this: in 1986, companies could reach over 80% of Americans by advertising on three main television stations: ABC, NBC and CBS. Back then, all media was purchased media.
Thanks to emerging technologies and the consumer’s rapid adoption of social media networks, today the media landscape has evolved into a linked and fluid mix of both paid and unpaid media.
How amazing! We are talking about free media. Of course, just like public relations, while you do not purchase the media space or time, you do pay for the talent and technologies that get you to your targeted audience’s rapt attention, be it coverage or conversations.
To help you better understand and leverage today’s new media choices, here are the new media definitions and chart from allfacebook.com:
Paid Media:
Simple. This is the paid-for media we all understand. This is the age-old practice of buying space or time for advertising or sponsorships over a defined period of time or a defined area of space.
This is television, print, outdoor, online advertising, sponsorships, public relations, signage, special events and so on.
Unpaid (Free) Media:
Today, there are 3 main channels of unpaid media, but given the pace of today’s innovations, tomorrow there could be more.
1. Owned Media: This includes every medium and property that you own and have complete control over its content, usage and deployment. Owned media includes your company’s website, magazine, catalogue, blog, e-newsletter, e-zine, etc.
2. Earned Media: This is media that your company has earned because you did something newsworthy that garnered the organic coverage of your brand on blogs, radio, video sites, newspapers, magazines and television.
Simply said, your brand did something positive and you were rewarded with the positive attention of your audience. Of course, if your brand did something people perceived as negative, you will unhappily have earned negative media.
3. Shared Media: Think of this as the rewarding conversations and engagement cherished by socially relevant brands. Promoted by Facebook and its more than 500 million users, Allfacebook.com describes Shared Media as: Shared Media is the documented engagement between a brand and a user where that engagement is reflected in both their networks and not fully owned by either entity.
In layman’s terms, when you Like or comment on a Brand’s Status Update or post on the wall of a brand’s Facebook page, a physical record of your action now exists on both the Brand’s page and your personal Profile.
The brand doesn’t exclusively own the content, nor do you. The content is partially owned and partially earned. Since that gets a little confusing, it’s better to think of that content as now being Shared Media.
What makes Shared Media so important? It is the exponential power of the numbers. When a Facebook friend makes a comment on your brand’s Status Update or Liked the Status Update or better yet, they write a favorable comment on your brand’s Facebook wall, these actions are reflected in the Feed Stories for their friends to see.
Do the math. Assuming the average Facebook user has 130 friends and their 130 friends have another 130 friends, that quickly gets you to 2,197,000 total friends of friends of friends. Well, that gives you the pure power of it all.
Today, with over 70% of the affluent audience using social media networks like Facebook, Considered-Purchase Brands can increase their reach and their audience engagement and their leads – using these new forms of unpaid media.
Are you using a mix of paid and unpaid media? Is Shared Media delivering better for you than Earned Media?