Last week we covered paid media as one third of an integrated approach to content promotion. Although paid opportunities are great for reaching a broader audience, they can also be an expensive approach. Thankfully, owned media can lend a helping hand.

In this post, we briefly explore what owned media is and offer eight quick-fire tips for leveraging relevant platforms effectively.

What Is Owned Media? 

Owned media refers to all branded profiles, resources, and venues created, owned, and controlled by a company or its agents. This avenue of promotion is not entirely free since someone still has to create and maintain a steady flow of content, but a brand can generate and deliver a message on its own terms.

Examples include:

• Company and brand websites;
• Company and brand blogs;
• Social media profiles and brand pages;
• Email newsletters;
• Apps;
• Webinars;
• Videos;
• Press releases;
• Brochures;
• In-store visual displays and merchandising;
• And other permission marketing assets. 

It requires time and effort to build a following on owned media, but it is an essential part of attracting prospects and acquiring new clients.

The Benefit of Content Promotion Across Owned Media 

Perhaps the biggest pull toward owned media for content promotion is the ability to maintain complete control. From deciding what type of content to publish, when to publish it, and how often to publish it to controlling how it’s structured, how it’s displayed within a branded page, and how consumers interact with it, a business has complete authority over every aspect. With that in mind, it’s important for a brand to wield its power wisely. The following pointers can help.

8 Quick-Fire Tips for a Success 

The success of a brand’s promotional campaign across owned media relies on the business’s ability to form long-lasting relationships with consumers. Therefore, the aim should be to develop emotional engagement rather than publish promotional content. This is where the 80/20 rule of content comes into play. In other words, 80 percent of your content should be interesting, relevant, and customer-centric while 20 percent of your content should be interesting, relevant, and brand-centric. Along with applying this simple principle, you can use the following eight quick-fire tips to boost your effectiveness.

1. Be Consistent In Tone and Style

Whether they’re on your website, blog, or social media profiles, it’s crucial to create a cohesive experience for consumers. Therefore, your branding and messaging should be consistent in tone and style across all platforms.

2. Create Connections between Owned Media

Most channels allow you to link various sites and profiles to one another. For example, links on your website and blog can point readers to your social media profiles and vice versa. This gives you an opportunity to keep consumers within an interlinked network of branded content and pages.

3. Find Ways to Promote Content in A Platform-Native Way

The way in which you promote your content across owned media will depend on the platform. Let’s say, for instance, that you’re promoting a free whitepaper. While you might create extracts for your social media updates, you might decide to elaborate on certain statistics or information contained within the download for a blog post. If you’ve created relevant images, you might choose to promote those instead. The key is to find interesting and unique ways to promote your content across all owned platforms without giving too much away. Be sure to link all materials back to the original, as well as drive distribution from the source page through tools like Twitter Cards.

4. Update Your Assets Regularly

Frequent sharing not only establishes a strong presence for your brand and keeps it top-of-mind, but it also ensures consumers regularly come back for more.

5. Post Relevant Content That Belongs To Others

Useful, interesting information does not need to be self-promotional. If you provide valuable, relevant content, you will drive traffic to your owned media assets, so make sure you’re not explicitly promoting your brand in every piece you publish.

6. Let Consumers Drive Your Content Ideas

There’s no reason you can’t crowdsource blog or ebook topics, or even let readers weigh in on key questions, without giving up full control of the message. Be prepared to let your consumers drive content ideas and conversations on your owned media. You may just learn something about your target audience you wouldn’t have otherwise known.

7. Be Sure To Interact

Increasing loyalty and building solid customer relationships requires two-way communication. Make sure those interactions are positive and that you respond quickly when consumers reach out to you.

8. Optimize Your Social Media Updates Properly

Optimization tactics can help boost your exposure. Be sure you include relevant account tags, hashtags, and links when appropriate.

Conclusion

Ultimately, you want to become an asset to your target audience, which is exactly what owned media allows you to do. The best part is that you have full control over these platforms, so the ball is in your court when it comes to promoting your content. Learn how to leverage owned media effectively because it offers some of the easiest and cheapest promotional opportunities you’ll find.

In what unique ways do you use owned media to promote your content? Perhaps you have additional tips you’d like to add to our list. Weigh in on the conversation by posting your thoughts below. 

Have you nailed down an impressive content creation strategy, but failed to flesh out a good promotional plan? Are you of the opinion that your content will market itself? Perhaps you’re part of the crowd who believe that their job is done once they tweet a link to their freshly published whitepaper. If only content marketing were that easy.

The harsh reality is this: if you’re not implementing an integrated three-pronged approach that includes paid, owned, and earned media, you’re missing opportunities to maximize the impact of your content and the benefits you hope to derive from it. It’s time to rectify that problem—starting with paid media.

What Is Paid Media? 

Content promotion via paid media refers to all forms of advertising where a brand or its agents pay to put content in front of established audiences. Channels can range from social networks and news syndication sites to blogs and search engines.

Examples include:

• Search advertising (Google Adwords);
• Sponsorship or native advertising opportunities through content amplification services like Outbrain, Taboola, or Sharethrough;
• Display or banner ads;
• Social network advertising like Facebook ads, sponsored stories, promoted tweets, LinkedIn ads, and featured Youtube videos;
• Traditional advertising;

• And direct mail. 

The Benefits of Content Promotion Across Paid Media 

Besides enabling a brand to reach individuals who are not actively searching for that brand, paid media opportunities also allow a business to target consumers based on buyer persona profiles. These people already have an interest in the products and services the business offers, which makes these consumers higher quality leads. Even though the brand doesn’t own the channel, marketers still have control over the content that is promoted.

The key question every marketer should ask before embarking on a promotional campaign is, “How can I buy visibility and traffic for my selected piece of content while staying within the confines of my budget?” The answer isn’t always a simple one, but the following pointers can help.

Tips for a Successful Strategy

1. Choose the Right Content 

If you’re going to invest advertising dollars into boosting visibility and generating awareness, you need to ensure you’re investing in a worthy piece of content. Your selection can either make or break your campaign so make certain the piece you choose is based not only on your budget, but also on your goals. If, for example, your budget is minimal, consider a highly targeted, relevant, and engaging piece of content designed to drive value at the narrow end of your sales funnel where evaluation, leads, sales, or signups may be your goals.

2. Choose the Right Platform

Where will the content you’ve created gain the most traction? That depends on where your ideal prospects hang out online and how well the content you’re promoting will resonate with them.

Does your piece of content fit the style of a particular publication? Would it be better received as a promoted tweet or LinkedIn ad? Perhaps you even created content with a specific network in mind. If you’re not quite sure what will work, test the waters before you blow your entire budget.

3. Target the Right Audience 

The audience scale for paid media may be greater than that of your owned media, but are the right people seeing your ad copy? If not, you may have a high click-through rate but very few qualified leads.

Most platforms offer targeting options these days, allowing you to drill down into the specifics of the buyer persona you’re planning to target. It’s the best way to reach decision makers while keeping ad expenses low.

4. Write Irresistible Copy 

We don’t have to tell you that a creative, concise, and convincing ad or storyline with an eye-catching image is the way to go if you want conversions. If your content is gated and you’re directing prospects to a landing page, make sure it’s equally as engaging as the ad copy that got them there.

Conclusion 

No matter how great your content is, it doesn’t mean that people will find it on their own. Therefore, you must build a promotional plan around the paid, owned, and earned matrix if you hope to optimize your content marketing campaign and drive maximum results. Paid media and owned media can be the greatest catalysts for gaining earned media (which is the most valuable), so be sure to look for meaningful opportunities and don’t forget to measure results against your KPIs.

Do you have a comprehensive promotional plan? Are you using the three-pronged approach or are you winging it? Let us know your thoughts on paid media for content promotion in the comment section. 

Although global trust in brand messages and advertising has slightly increased over the last few years, a recent report by Nielson indicates that 84 percent of consumers still trust earned media above all other forms of advertising. If anything, this strong sway towards word-of-mouth and recommendations from family and peers highlights the importance of owning content people want to share with others.

The question is whether you’re developing content assets with shareability in mind, as well as setting up your publishing platforms with the tools necessary to make sharing easy. While focusing on useful topic ideas and user personas is a major part of content marketing, it’s critical to examine how you enable that content to spread. The following shareability tips can help improve your content for virality purposes and set you up for the widest reach possible.

1. Understand Why Content Goes Viral

In our blog post about the seven reasons content goes viral, we touched on some key emotional and mental factors in content that tend to resonate with people. Although marketers may never fully understand why one piece of content finds fame overnight while another lays dormant for months (perhaps never to be discovered), understanding these factors is an essential part of understanding why someone might want to share something. It’s also a huge part of emulating those factors in your own content.

In addition to these triggers, there are certain best practices you can follow when creating content with the potential to go viral.

Here’s a quick rundown:

• Create short, compelling headlines

• Think about your target audience

• Trigger high-arousal emotions

• Offer incredible value

• Publish content in digestible formats

• Ensure your content is useful

• Be creative and unique

Ultimately, you should evaluate several pieces of viral content within your industry and define the common denominators of their popularity. This can help you figure out what type of content you should create for your audience, as well as what it should include to trigger a share.

2. Understand the Psychology behind Sharing

The New York Times Customer Insight Group released a thought-provoking whitepaper on the motivations behind sharing and the six personas of people who share. The study revealed that motivators include:

• self-fulfillment;
• enriching the lives of others with entertaining and valuable content;
• establishing or reinforcing a desired image of one’s self;
• building and nourishing relationships;
• and spreading the word about causes or brands.

Personas are segmented according to four factors, including emotional catalysts, the image an individual wants to present to others, the role of sharing in life, and the value of being the first person to share. The study also highlights the main channel each group prefers to share through, with email still claiming the number one spot for most.

Understanding the psychology of sharing is a crucial aspect of content marketing because you can’t expand your content’s reach if you don’t understand the careful consideration that goes into sharing or the key factors that influence sharing in the first place. Therefore, you should spend time researching these motivators so you create the kind of content people want to pass on to family, friends, and peers.

3. Allow For Personalization

Make certain that when people share your content they have the ability to customize the share. Although you may have compelling text you’ve created to pre-populate the message box, readers should be able to change the message, add their own hashtags, and alter the share for their specific audiences.

4. Optimize Your Site for Sharing by Buttoning Up

Sharing buttons make your content both actionable and shareable. They also make sharing easy for users who can interact with content in the context of your site rather than leaving your page to copy and paste URLs to their open social media feeds.

HubSpot have a great cheat sheet for creating Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and Pinterest buttons. Alternatively, you can check out Social Media Examiner’s post on customizing social share buttons for increased traffic. If you’re not already making use of them, optimize your sites with sharing options today and start building your brand credibility through valuable recommendations.

5. Ask

You want people to spread the word about your content? Sometimes there’s little more effective than a strong call to action that asks for a share. Craft a powerful CTA that reinforces the value of sharing—not just liking—and you may find your reach widens a little faster than usual.

As a final note, you shouldn’t forget to consider your distribution channels and supporting platforms. Not only do you want to promote your content via appropriate social media outlets and websites, but you also want to ensure your audience can share and view it on multiple platforms, including mobile.

Do you create content with shareability in mind? Have something to add? Let us know your thoughts and tips in the comment section.

According to WordPress.com’s latest stats, more than 38.7 million blog posts were published across its network in February, 2014. Considering that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of total content published online during that month, it’s safe to say that each piece of content you create is unlikely to remain visible for very long in today’s somewhat turbulent SERPs and burgeoning social media streams. As monthly posting averages continue to increase, the odds of gaining traction—let alone viral traction—tend to decrease.

Posting Activity: Figures include posts published on blogs hosted by WordPress.com, as well as those posted on externally-hosted blogs using the platform’s Jetpack plugin.

So, what’s a B2B content marketer to do?

“Now that so many B2B marketers are focused on content marketing, you have to get creative if you want to elevate yourself above the competition. By investing in primary research, you can produce more compelling and original content that is backed by quantitative analysis,” says Derek Singleton, Analyst at Software Advice and Managing Editor of The B2B Marketing Mentor Blog. “Investing in this type of content can help build the authority of your brand, as well as trust with your target buyers.”

We tend to agree. Content is simply content until people care about it, which is why it’s so crucial to publish valuable information that compels conversation while establishing your brand as an industry leader. Original market data that assists your target audience in what they do accomplishes that and more. In case you’re not convinced, consider these additional advantages of primary research and you’ll quickly see why it’s content marketing gold.

Sharpen Your Positioning

Besides boosting your brand’s authority, credibility, reputation, and influence, this tactic offers another significant benefit. Making a firm commitment to primary research and the development of content around resulting data allows you to sharpen your brand’s positioning. It gives you an opportunity to define your niche clearly, as well as shape your thought leadership.

Challenge the Status Quo

It’s not enough to prove your intellect these days. You have to be thought provoking and provide meaningful information that challenges the status quo. Original research can help you identify future trends and show your target audience where changes need to be made now rather than later when opportunity cost may be greater. That’s where true value lies.

Stretch Your Marketing Dollars Further

Perhaps the biggest pull to champion an investment in primary research is that brands can generate plenty of spin-off content. Over time, a single piece of research has the ability to spawn multiple blog posts, articles, webinars, infographics, videos, news releases, podcasts, Slideshare presentations, and more.

Atomizing your research report to fuel your blog and other content marketing channels ensures your feeds stay relevant and active while your brand gets the biggest bang for its marketing buck. Don’t forget that analyzing results, explaining your research methodology, or identifying, dissecting, and understanding trends offers plenty of fodder for interesting topics. In the context of your entire content marketing program, the budget required for original research is relatively negligible.

Drive Conversation in the Right Direction

Depending on how you release your research, you can leverage the data to engage in one-on-one, in-depth conversations with leads and prospects. This is an ideal opportunity to engage in conversation that points to a solution—your solution. In the end, it’s all about turning content into conversation and then converting that conversation into revenue.

Retain More Clients

Primary research as part of a robust content marketing strategy can be great for acquisitions, but that doesn’t help the C-level crowd who wonder whether yours is still the best team to help grow their business. Relevant research can help you create content that convinces existing clients you’re still worth it—that you know what you’re doing. Done the right way, your research won’t only improve retention rates, but it’ll help you upsell new services, too.

Amplify Attention

Besides serving as excellent link bait, research generates social sharing. High-value, unique data is both useful and interesting, which are two characteristics people look for when deciding to share content with their online communities. The result is better rankings, greater awareness, and more eyeballs on your content.

Rake In Tons of User-Generated Content

Research can be a powerful enabler of user-generated content. Depending on your topic, research techniques, and methods for gathering data, responses serve as a great source of this content type. Get creative about the way you pose questions, and you’re sure to have plenty of original ideas and opinions voluntarily submitted to your entity along with built-in data you can use in your next report.

Build Social Proof

You know what all those likes, shares, +1s, comments, and pins amount to? You guessed it—social proof that carries plenty of persuasive power.

Generate More Leads

Highly focused research neatly packaged in a downloadable white paper is generally a great lead generator. Be sure to add lots of visual content to make your report easy to digest.

But Research Is Expensive, Right?

Not necessarily. Yes, access to data, deeper intelligence, and the sharp eye of experienced industry analysts will require a bigger portion of your budget if you’re looking to create something that’s more complex in nature. However, in-house experiments, analytics, A/B testing, and other online research tools offer inexpensive, alternative solutions that also produce compelling results. Combine that data with your unique perspective and expert advice and you’ll have new material for an array of content archetypes. In fact, the folks at Software Advice have built their own survey tool that collects responses and analyzes them in real time.

“We recently decided to invest in user surveys to track the benefits of software from a user’s perspective. As a result, we’re developing content that speaks directly to the needs of software end users and gauges the effectiveness of some of the most popular products on the market.”

If you want to weigh in on CRM software and make your opinion matter, consider taking Software Advice’s survey.

The bottom line: get clever about your content marketing. You can add to the noise with recycled information no one cares about, or you can invest in unique insights that are sure to give your campaign a few extra marketing miles.

What do you think? Is primary research an effective content marketing tactic or do you have a few tricks up your sleeve that are just as powerful? Make your voice heard by leaving a comment below. Don’t forget to hit the share button if you know others who will find this post useful.