Earned Media’s Value
By: Paige Isch, Communications Director
One of the most important actions you can take to promote your brand and engage with your audience is to tell your brand’s story — the why behind your organization, the mission behind everything you do and why your audience should care. However, effective storytelling is easier said than done. Something we stress at Bohlsen Group is the importance of earned media, or any material written about you or your organization that you haven’t paid for or created yourself. It’s content that is truly earned based on the reputation of your business.
I recently read a PRWeek article, “Earned media’s value: The true story,” that clearly explained the value of earned media, especially in a world where almost everything can be measured or quantified. Because of this ability to measure success and data, the value of earned media can be difficult to communicate. However, the article explained that storytelling is crucial for brands to connect with their customers, as people want to do business with organizations with a strong reputation, with companies that support their values and priorities and with brands that they feel a connection with. Earned media offers companies the institutional trust that journalists and news outlets have spent decades building.
Quality over quantity
When it comes to coverage discussing your organization, quality always trumps quantity. Targeted messages reaching audiences that matter most to your brand are invaluable, and what a brand defines as “quality” is all dependent on who their audience is, what their main goals are and who they’re trying to reach. For example, it’s better to have your subject matter expert quoted several times in a publication that you know your audience is reading that contains a link back to your website instead of a small mention that is shared several times in publications that are not reaching your target segment with no link back to your company.
This is why Bohlsen Group has developed a proprietary earned media measurement system that measures the true quality of placements based on reach (an organization’s target markets and outlets), brand quality (keywords and phrases included, subject matter experts quoted with a positive sentiment) and digital impact (the placement’s digital presence through online and social media shares and a link back to the company included).
Why tell a story?
Per the PRWeek article I mentioned, traditional media and storytelling is more important than ever since it can cut through the clutter. One story can move an issue and create momentum. Traditional media is what is shared on all social platforms, and one story can lead to hundreds of hits on different media.
The credibility that comes from reading about a person or brand in a traditional publication is still depended upon because it shows what someone else thinks about a brand. Earned media assists readers in forming an opinion based on what a credible source already thinks. The PRWeek article gave a good example: earned media is not different to how you build your own personal reputation, which is also shaped by what others think.
And finally, earned media can also influence how employees feel about their own company and company morale. Employees want to see their brand in the news making a difference in the world, and if a positive story about your company is shared, it makes you proud to represent your organization.
Measurement options
It is difficult to pull meaningful metrics and ad equivalency values for earned media, since ad equivalency is not always a completely accurate measurement. You can, however, find the potential number of impressions an article received, or how many people potentially read the article, based on an outlet’s unique online visitors per month, or if the placement is shared in-print, you can pull the outlet’s distribution numbers. Share of Voice is also a good way to compare your brand’s efforts to the competition. Bohlsen Group has developed a proprietary Share of Voice measurement system in which all placements are gathered and scored based on the quality of the publication and the placement, factoring into the overall Share of Voice percentage. You can also measure subscribers (or something similar) to see if that number increases when a story is published.
In the article I read, the authors mentioned they have never seen a startup, technology or software company, or even any large-scale brand, use “as seen on [fill in the social media platform]” on their homepage. The first thing even the most disruptive companies do is try to get a business publication in the traditional press to write about them. The credibility organizations gain from earned media and the reputation they are able to build can be invaluable to their overall success. This only further emphasizes that storytelling is foundational to every company.