📝 What Is Owned Media?
Understanding the power of owned media
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Owned media is a key part of marketing for any brand seeking to boost traffic, find new clients, and increase revenues. But what is it, and why should you pay attention to the amount of owned media you are creating? Whether you are a blogger, entrepreneur, small business owner, or corporate executive, having a good understanding of owned media can help you develop better digital marketing strategies. Continue reading to know what owned media is and how to use it to your advantage.
Owned media definition
Owned media can be defined as all the digital content produced and maintained by a brand and shared with the public. In the past, owned media often referred only to a company’s website and all the page content making it up. However, the expansion of digital marketing over the years has pushed brands to create and publish a much wider variety of content to meet the needs of their target audience.
Common types of owned media
The more owned media you have, the higher your chances of growing your traffic and getting conversions. Audiences are made up of different types of people who consume content in ways that are in line with their individual experiences and lifestyles. When readers and followers share your owned media, it can reach other people who never knew about you before, as well as improve your SEO, or even create opportunities for further coverage in large publications and in the press. With that said, the most common types of owned media brands use to connect with their target customers include:
Blogs and website content
Statistics show that there are roughly 570 million blogs on the internet, making this form of owned media one of the most popular. Individual bloggers and companies create blogs where they can share informative articles and other content with their readers, a strategy which can help grow brand awareness and drive traffic.
Before the explosion of blogs and social media, general website content was the main form of owned media for companies. Websites – with or without blogs – are still important because they are usually the first entry points people use to learn about a brand. For example, people will visit a website’s about page, home page, services page, or contact page to find out more about the brand’s offerings and how to get in touch.
Social media posts
Between Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and other new media networks, social media channels attract more than 60% of all internet users. This amounts to billions of people, which is why brands need to create owned media in the form of social media posts to engage as many consumers as possible who might be interested in their offerings.
Newsletters and email campaigns
Recent figures suggest that there are over four billion email users worldwide. This indicates that there is a high chance you can keep growing your audience by creating owned media via newsletters and email campaigns. These types of owned media allow you to send news, updates, and other useful information to people on your email contact list. In addition, email can be used as as marketing funnels that dictate how people interact with your content and gain access to your products and services. Also, most email marketing platforms allow you to segment your contact lists, so you can target specific members of your audience with content that is more relevant to their individual needs, thereby maximizing engagement.
Multimedia channels
Creating and uploading audio and video on streaming platforms is also another form of owned media. Starting a channel on YouTube, for example, allows you the opportunity to reach a wide audience of people who may prefer to watch videos about your offerings than read blog posts or website content. Furthermore, video content can be used to bring people to other types of owned media belonging to you by linking to them, and vice versa.
Benefits of owned media
As mentioned above, owned media helps to boost brand awareness and grow traffic. But there are other reasons why you should spend time creating high-quality owned media.
You have full control: Your owned media is truly your own. Whereas an advertising platform can choose to stop displaying your ad for whatever reason, you have authority over much of your owned media, as long as it doesn’t violate the rules of the channel on which it is published. In addition, the power is in your hands to create the kind of message you want to share with your target audience, and to what segments you want to share particular pieces of content with.
Boosts the effect of earned and paid media: While owned media is content created by you, earned media is that which is created about you. This can be in the form of customer reviews, press coverage in a news publication, or other types of positive feedback about your services. On the other hand, there is also paid media, which, as the name suggests, involves a brand paying for coverage – typically in the form of digital advertising. The thing is, for earned media and paid media to deliver the expected results, it requires that you have solid pieces of owned media for your target audience to check out. The more owned media you have, the higher the likelihood that target customers will trust your brand and will be easier to convert.
Inexpensive: Once you have a blog, social media page, or website, you can create as much owned content as you want at relatively low costs. And if you already have the skills (and time) to create your own social media content, blog posts, or web copy, you can easily produce your owned media for free. This is in contrast to paid media, which requires ad spend in order to reach anyone.
Stays around: Once you create and publish owned media, it can stay around on the internet for as long as you want. Moreover, it often requires little to no maintenance. Posting a tweet, for example, will see the content staying on Twitter for the life of your account, unless you delete it or it gets blocked for some reason. Likewise, as long as your website or blog is operational, the associated owned media will remain accessible to everyone who visits.
Conclusion
Whether you are new to online marketing or have been around for a while, paying attention to owned media is a great strategy that can help secure long term success for your brand.
Until next time!