There have been more significant changes in search in the last 6 months than there have been in the last year: Google +1, Panda Updates and an overall more social search. How does it affect the role of PR professionals? How does it redefine earned, owned and paid media? These are questions that I’d like to try to answer, but I’m not naïve enough to think I can accomplish this in one post.
If you are a marketing or PR Professional, the lines of responsibility have now blurred. No longer can you keep your department silo-ed from the other departments that are putting out branded content. You now have to think about how all of your branded content – multimedia, white papers, tip sheets, press releases – is classified and how it will ultimately get you to that “share” amongst your social circles.
Earned media used to just be about how many people were following your brand on Twitter or how many people were “liking” your products or services on Facebook? Now, that’s not enough. Your followers have to do more than just “follow” or “like” your brand – they have to become an evangelist for your brand. They have to not only read your content but they have to be compelled to share it with their social networks.
It’s not enough to write a search engine optimized press release and send it out across the wire. You have to make sure that your press release has some meat. Ask yourself – why does my audience care about this news? Is my press release easily sharable with quick facts that can easily be repurposed on Twitter and LinkedIn?
Sarah Evans recently put out this blog post about the Pew Internet Social Media Study that exemplifies a new way of making all of your content more easily sharable. This post could be shared using 23 different facts from the study 23 different ways. Sarah understands that one fact may compel one person to share more than another and doesn’t assume that everyone wants to simply share the headline of her blog post instead the facts inside of it.
“Regardless of what type of media it is, you still need to conceive of its potential as earned media,” says Curtis Hougland, founder and CEO of Attention. “You need to conceive of the distribution of the content at its conception and then filter everything through its earned potential.” This is especially important, he says, when you consider that all content — whether it’s text, a video or a microsite — will be “reduced to a link” for social spheres.
According to the Pew Internet Social Media Study, The average American has 634 ties in their overall network, and technology users have bigger networks. That is a huge number that cannot be ignored. Imagine the potential that your company’s social network has to spread the awareness of your next campaign.
This post is part of the Future of Earned Media series.
