Wouldn’t it be great if you could take all that content you’ve worked so hard on and expose it to a new audience without starting from scratch? Welcome to earned media and part two of our three-part series on paid, owned, and earned media.
A lot of content creators out there still have the question, “How do I get people to find the content that I’m creating?” Because what’s the point of creating it if no one’s listening?
Paid, owned, and earned media are important ingredients in content discovery. Your content discovery gets nurtured when you can have more people exposed to it, and you can do that by leveraging what we call earned media.
Tap into existing audiences…
Now, what are we talking about when we say earned media? We’re talking about using existing people and channels to spread your brand and message to existing audiences.
Think about it. Your audience already follows other people and other channels. That’s the key to earned media: Your audience isn’t living in a vacuum.
They maybe haven’t heard of you, but they are already walking through their day, listening to other people, joining groups they find important, going to events, watching shows, listening to shows… They have people they follow in the channels they listen to.
Your job is not to convince your audience to consume media. Your job is to expose them to your content and your message.
For free
So, one good way to do that is to introduce yourself to those audiences where they currently are, which leads us to the best part about earned media: It’s free. It doesn’t cost you a cent to get featured on someone else’s show.
What it will take is a little bit of effort, a little bit of planning and strategy.
When you’re out there meeting people and introducing your brand for the first time, it helps to have someone else introducing you. Think about when you go to a party. It’s hard to be a stranger who walks up and introduces yourself to someone you’ve never met before. But if you know someone and that person walks you around the party and introduces you to new people, they are more than happy to receive you and to learn more about you.
It’s just like that with media. No one wants to talk to strangers. But if you can have someone else tell your story for you, then you’ll be on your way to leveraging earned media in the right way.
Let’s focus on three aspects of earned media:
- What it is.
- Its role in your business, content creation, and content discovery process.
- Tactics you can take to generate discovery leveraging earned media.
What is earned media?
The best way to think of earned media is word of mouth and exposure on other people’s channels. These are the things other people say about you.
Publicity
Now, that can be through publicity or public relations, which is basically you finding a way to be featured or have your content or message featured somewhere else. Like where?
- An article
- Someone else’s show
- A popular publication in your industry
- A podcast in your industry
- A Facebook live or a YouTube channel.
Being featured on someone else’s show or being talked about in someone else’s article is traditional publicity. And that’s all earned because someone else has done the work to create that channel. You show up, you provide your point of view, and then they share that with all of the people they’ve developed over time as their following, or their fan base.
Advocacy
So, publicity is one piece of earned media sharing, but advocacy is another part of it. Advocacy is when the things that you create and you post on your channels are then shared by other people on their channels.
Think of someone reposting your tweet, or sharing your Facebook or Instagram posts, or tagging you in a post for something you’ve created. It could be the people you’ve helped or coached sharing their testimonials, whether they put it on Yelp or LinkedIn or Facebook.
Wherever it is, there’s someone saying, “This person has helped me,” or “This message really resonated with me,” or “This content really spoke to me today.”
A big part of earned media is other people telling your story.
Now, it could be on their channels. And maybe it’s not a big media channel, but that’s OK. Their 100 followers or their 500 followers have contacts, so that exposure can get larger and larger.
Or, maybe there’s someone you meet who has a lot of influence or a Facebook group that’s really engaged. Getting into their channels is important. That’s a hundred people or a thousand people you hadn’t reached before.
Maybe you meet someone who has actually built influence as an individual. This might be someone in your industry who is speaking on stages or writing books or has built a decent following on social media. Maybe they have a large, engaged email list. Finding that kind of person or influencer in your industry might be the ticket for you.
The role of earned media
Trust through association
Why go through the trouble of collecting earned media? The first reason, when you think about being that person at the party, is trust. Earned media builds trust through association.
The person you know already has a relationship with their audience. When that person introduces you, the audience is trusting not you, but the person you are with. They’re assuming that the person they trust is introducing someone worthy of being introduced, because why would they take the time if they didn’t like you? For example? So the first part is trust through association. You’ve somehow made an acquaintance that is connected to that person.
A warm introduction
Another role of earned media, kind of along that same route, is that it’s a warm introduction to a cold audience.
Instead of you having to find audiences that have never heard of you, which we call cold audiences, someone else has warmed up the audience for you.
A lot of you are trying to figure out how to get strangers to like you or to know you, but that’s tough with a cold audience. A warm introduction through an established, trusted figure gives you not just trust association with that person, but new eyeballs. It’s new people who you’ve maybe not even thought of reaching out to.
Credibility
The third role of earned media is credibility, and this is cumulative. The more people who introduce you, the more people are hearing about you.
Imagine if two or three or four people in the room mentioned you. “Have you met Brandon? He’s great at that thing you’re asking about.” Pretty soon it’s, “Oh, someone else was talking about him, too.”
That’s credibility over time, and it accumulates. The more people see you being shared across all these channels that they come in contact with, whether it’s in person or social or something else, the more credibility you’re building. That’s social proof in its own right.
Referrals
The last piece here is referrals. You want people saying, “I’ve got a guy for that.” And you’re that guy or that girl. Those referrals, that word of mouth, is huge.
Think about it. “Oh yeah, I know an accountant. I know a financial advisor, or a website guy, or someone to fix your car or your plumbing or your roof or your electricity.”
When someone’s looking for a service, knowing someone who’s done it is a win-win for everyone. The person giving advice feels like they were helping the person asking for it. You, as the service provider, get the benefit of that relationship.
Becoming known as the person who does the thing you do, and being trusted enough that people refer you is huge.
Earned media tactics for discovery
How can you get your brand discovered, leveraging the power of earned media? Here are a few things to think about that will make this easier for you.
Clear messaging
Clear messaging means taking the time to actually hone in on what you’re going to tell people that helps them understand what you really do and who you really help.
For example, if I said, “Hey, I’m a marketing guy,” that’s a little vague. It doesn’t enable someone else to talk about exactly who I can help and how I help them.
Instead, I could say, “Hey, I help service-based entrepreneurs develop their personal brands.” Or I could get even deeper and say, “I help coaches develop their personal brand online.”
That’s very specific. So anytime someone meets a coach, they might say, “You know what? Brandon can help you develop your personal brand.”
You can get more specific as you go, but figuring out how to define yourself in a way that’s clear and that other people can take and run with is really helpful.
Clear positioning
Now, it’s not just what you say but how you position yourself. What makes you different?
You might have to explain that in multiple ways. It might be explaining your experience. “Hey, I’ve been in marketing 18-plus years. I worked with massive brands, and I take what I’ve learned and apply it to personal brands. And I’ve also built it for myself.”
That’s positioning. Not everyone has had a long career in marketing and has built their personal brand.
Maybe you have a lot of experience in something, or you’ve really honed in on one particular thing that you’re good at. For example, I love content marketing. I love podcasting. Those are things in my tool belt that I think are really large keys to helping with personal branding.
Someone else might say they’re great at personal branding, too, but they love copywriting and blogging. Whatever that thing is, those are two different people serving the same audience, but with a different background or skill.
You want to position yourself in a market so people understand what you’re good at and how you are different from other people who do the same thing you do.
To leverage the power of earned media, you need to know how to say what you do, who you do it for and how you do it in a clear way that differentiates you from everyone else. The reason that’s important is that if you want other people to consistently share who you are and what you’re all about, you have to do it, too.
You have to do it first on a consistent basis. And as you do it over and over and over, it’ll embed in their minds, and they’ll be able to do it as well.
Relationships with peers
If you want your peers and people in your industry to talk about you, then you have to build relationships with them. Networking and building your pool of influence are all about relationships.
The more people you know, and the more people who know you and like you and want to help you, the more people are going to be available to share your information with others.
Think about it this way. Think about who you would want to connect with. Maybe it’s peers in your industry. So if I’m a branding person, I might want to talk to other branding people and have those relationships so we all can help each other out.
I also want to talk to other creators, other people putting content out there in my industry, because they’ve started to build their own audiences. Regardless of how big or small they are. Having a creator I can collaborate with or who is just out there building their audience is going to be helpful in terms of relationship building.
Relationships with influencers
Another one is influencers, people who have gone beyond creating and have actually established themselves as a leader in the market. That is someone that you definitely want to build a relationship with.
And you might have to do that differently. They might be harder to get to and introduce yourself, so you might actually have to participate in their programs or become involved in their communities. Become an active participant in the things they create or do.
If they host something live, how do you show up and put yourself in a room or in a situation where you can actually engage with them and shake their hand and get to know them better?
I’ve heard of people paying for coaching programs or going on trips to visit people’s retreats and whatever else, just to get in the room with someone that might be an influencer in their category. That’s what you have to think about to build meaningful relationships with the people who have influence and audiences in your industry.
Relationships with companies
So, there are individuals you want to meet, but also think about media platforms and companies that are creating content in your industry. This could be an established media company, trade association, event or events company that people in your industry go to.
I like to podcast, so I go to podcasting conventions and events. I go to social media marketing events and other marketing conferences so I can meet people who are in my space and we can find ways to connect and build relationships. Those media platforms are the next thing to look at because that’s where a lot of your influencers and creators are going to be congregating.
Relationships with customers
Then there are customers. How do you build meaningful relationships as you start to interact with people who might want to do business with you? Or people who aren’t ready yet to do business with you, but are your right type of customer?
Find ways to help them find ways to have conversations. Get them on the phone, and learn more about them. Find ways to help them in small ways at first. Along the way, maybe in three or in six months, they might need what you have. Or, they might know someone who needs what you have and will refer them along to you.
Honestly, a good piece of advice you give to someone might be enough for them to still leave you a testimonial or to pass your information on to someone else.
You can think about this as building relationships one at a time, making an impact on one person at a time. It sounds small, but your efforts will go a lot further at the end of the day.
Ask yourself, how do you give people something to talk about? How do you interact with them in a way that makes an impact?
How do you create opportunity and conversations and relationships in a way that gives you a chance for someone to say something about you?
You give them something to talk about, whether it’s something you say or something you do or something you invest into a relationship. Give them something to talk about so that when they think of the thing you do, they think of you as a person they should refer.
Get discovered
Those are the tactics for using earned media for discovery: It’s clear positioning and messaging. It’s building meaningful relationships with peers, creators, influencers, media platforms, and customers. And lastly, it’s making an impact one person at a time.
If you can do those things, you will be on your way to developing an earned media program that will drive awareness and attention to your business.
MORE ADVICE AND INTERVIEWS
If you’d like my full plan for how to build your content marketing strategy, check out my free Content Marketing Starter Guide.
And here are some more of my most popular thought leader interviews!
- What Business to Start with John Lee Dumas
- Personal Branding Masterclass with Chris Ducker
- Built to Serve with Evan Carmichael
Don’t want to miss the next thought leader interview? Subscribe to the free B-team Insider Newsletter! And don’t forget to leave a rating and review on iTunes.
Talk soon!