What are the different media types? Owned vs. Paid vs. Earned – a Breakdown
The differences in types of media can be confusing, but they are crucial to understand. This is especially true if you are looking to revamp your media communications strategy.
Each of these types of media can be leveraged to drive traffic to your business and increase overall brand awareness.
Let’s dive into each one and find out how you can use it to benefit your business:
Owned Media:
It’s all yours!
No – literally, owned media is all yours.
Owned media is all of the content that you create and promote in-house. This includes news stories, blog posts, social media, articles on your brand’s official website, and more.
This kind of media is great because you have full creative and technical control over the content. You get to create the story angles, include the media assets you want to include, and get to choose which medium to use to promote the final product(s).
In much simpler terms, you get to choose what gets said and where it is said.
The benefits of owned media lie in the ability to control all of the aspects surrounding it. The difficulties come in getting this content noticed by the audiences whose attention you seek.
Paid Media:
This one is pretty straightforward. Paid media is a media mention for which you pay an outlet, writer, or influencer a specific amount.
There are different ways in which paid media is presented.
Some sites will place your story on their feeds or homepage if you pay them. Other major outlets will promote your content on their social media feeds, or they will distribute it through another channel. Popular influencers on Instagram or Twitter will create a custom post to promote your content on their accounts.
The benefits of paid media are that you don’t have to worry about figuring out how to get an audience for your content – that’s why you are paying the outlet or influencer. However, having to pay for an established audience can be a hindrance if you have a limited media or marketing budget.
Earned Media:
Earned media is what every business should strive for when they are executing their media communications strategy. Instances of earned media occur when a journalist, outlet, influencer, or external media entity creates content covering your business or story without any form of payment. In other words, you have earned the placement on their platform by creating solid content and distributing it properly.
The advantages of earned media are by far the best. You get the best of both worlds: your story receives coverage or a placement on a platform with an existing audience, and you don’t have to pay a single dime for it!
Of course, getting earned media mentions isn’t exactly easy.
So, how do I get Earned Media Mentions?
There isn’t a one-size-fits all plan that will help you land earned media mentions.
However, with Newswire’s Earned Media Advantage Guided Tour, you can revamp your media communications strategy to increase your chances for media opportunities within your industry.
With the help of an Earned Media Advantage Strategist working with you every step of the way, you can transform owned media in the form of press releases into the Earned Media Advantage. Using the right strategies, customers can lower their costs of press releases, increase the value of each release and lower paid-media costs while shortening the journey to achieve earned media mentions.
Want to drive traffic to your brand? Looking for increased brand awareness? Interested in increasing sales and receiving greater return on media spend?
If the answer to any of those questions is “Yes,” click here to learn more.
