How Storytelling Connects Paid, Earned, and Owned Media

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Onclusive

Posted: In: Blogs

Breaking down silos between Paid, Earned & Owned media through continuous storytelling

We are all familiar now with the PESO model. In December 2009, Forrester defined what it called the three new media options for interactive marketers: “paid, earned and owned.” Earned media had traditionally been the responsibility of public relations, while paid and owned media had been part of the marketing mandate.

In the meantime, the rise of shared or social media complicated things further. Was it a function of PR? Marketing? Its own function?

In 2012, in response to the Altimeter group’s white paper on “converged media” last summer, Jeremiah Owyang took a stab on his blog at defining the new workflow for paid, earned, owned and shared media. “Today, advertising, corporate content, and social content is often separated,” Owyang wrote, “but tomorrow, we expect these circles to converge and overlap, with little or no separation.”

Now, years later, it’s clear that PR, advertising and marketing have changed forever and that working together is the best tool these disciplines have in getting their brand’s message heard above the noise.

The challenge is that these teams frequently continue to be siloed and need a roadmap for continuous storytelling and story marketing.

The new continuous storytelling cycle

With social media, marketers have more (and cheaper) access to their communities and customers than ever, but it’s hard to keep up with the demand for quality content.

That’s why PR, marketing, communications and customer service have to work together to achieve their goals through a new story marketing cycle that involves content curation, creation, amplification and analytics:

Curating content allows brands to develop story ideas, stay on top of industry trends and establish an authoritative voice that resonates with their communities. The trick is to develop a group of content creators across functions that consistently shares interesting articles, posts, videos and more with each other – and then your clients or customers.

Creating content involves everything from traditional marketing content like white papers, collateral and ads, to earned media placements,  to owned media content like blog posts, infographics and videos. Marketing and PR teams will need to work together to create compelling content that serves customers across all platforms and channels.

Amplifying content through organic social sharing, traditional media relations outreach and online paid opportunities is the key to ensuring that your message isn’t getting lost in the noise. PR is typically responsible for social sharing and media outreach, but marketing can power that content through paid opportunities and email marketing.

Analyzing content is more important than ever throughout the storytelling cycle: utilizing AI-driven tools like Onclusive’s software to identify trends and measure true business impact of your content marketing efforts is paramount to your success and truly achieving converged media measurement.

This isn’t an easy process and the best way for a brand to achieve success is for the professionals that manage paid, earned, owned and social media communications to work together to develop an integrated – and effective – content strategy.

To learn about Onclusive, request a demo today.