What’s Old is New Again: Earned Media Can Be Your Hub
I was catching up with a former client recently. We launched their company a coupla years ago, and by almost any measure, it is now considered a hot commodity. They have tons of social media fans, lots of inbound media requests, do a lot of great content marketing, etc.
We originally parted ways, very amicably, because they had reached a degree of success that no longer warranted as much proactive effort (and, being a startup, they were wisely watching their burn rate).
During our catch-up session, this company representative described a newfound fever within the company to get more – and more awesome – mainstream media recognition.
“We want to be on the cover of a business magazine. We want to be a talking head on the business news channels. We want to be interviewed on the radio about industry trends. Etc.”
Even though they publish loads of content. Even though they have great SEO. Even though they already get a fair share of coverage. Even though they have a large and active social graph. Even though they have all that manna from heaven, they want more “old school” media coverage.
It’s an important lesson for those marketers who have become so enamored of the social stuff that they now pay short shrift to the bread-and-butter marketing tactics that still prove so effective at awareness-building, credibility and lead-generation.
Paid content is awesome. Owned content is awesome. Shared content is awesome. But earned content is extra-special awesome, cuz it can serve as a central spoke for those other media strategies.
You do something great. The mainstream media picks up on it. That’s a version of Earned Media that you can syndicate (paid), create an advertisement around (paid), post with special commentary to your social channels (owned/shared) — all of it predicated on the fact that you earned credible 3rd party endorsements of your great offering, activity or product.
Also, it’s more impressive to your mom.
Posted on: April 23, 2012 at 9:17 am By Todd Defren
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More than just “extra special,” traditional media still maintains the trust of publics everywhere. Many will go to their trusted sources to confirm something they may have read on Twitter or in a blog. The shift, in my opinion, hasn’t exlusively gone from traditional to new media, but mainly from print/tv/radio to online. Given that news clips, radio clips and other multimedia are available online, it’s still traditional media — and still carries with it the benefit of being called “earned media.”
There is something else that old-school PR creates that is obtainable elsewhere: cachet. And PR people have been living and dying by it for generations. Classic example: company just beyond raw start-up stage that gets more than its fair share of trade-press exposure and market-watcher praise, and goes on to segment leadership. The PR program that promoted this little engine-that-could is now expected to put the company on magazine covers and page one of the Sunday NYT biz section. On demand. No matter that the CEO is less than media-genic and the category’s total yawn to anyone other than Cal-Tech and Carnegie-Mellon brainiacs. Great press isn’t earned, according to this mentality. Is a God-given right. And if your PR people can’t deliver, they must be children of a lesser God.
I was thinking about this the other day too.
To me, earned and more traditional media still carries huge weight in most populations. While the shift to social has temporarily blinded many of us in the industry, those on the outside still put a huge amount of weight and equity into more traditional means and channels. In this age of startups (especially here in Boston), I refuse to take a company seriously until I see something physical and tangible — it shows grounding and comprehensiveness. People like to see that someone else has vetted the information, putting more time into it than a simple “click to repost.”
-Brian
@bdevit
So nice to hear that old school media is still “extra special awesome.” Not only does it have”legs” that can be capitalized upon, but when it comes down to it, there is nothing like having the story you pitched/developed/sweated over staring back at you from the pages of a newspaper, the cover of a magazine or on the 6 p.m. news. And yes, it is more impressive to your mom, and that still counts for something!