How to Encourage Earned Media

Most bloggers and online business owners miss golden opportunities to promote their brand and business

Most bloggers and online business owners miss golden opportunities to promote their brand and business by not having a media outreach program or focusing on earned media. Yet encouraging earned media can be one of the best ways to achieve your goals.

What Is Earned Media?

Earned media is when discussions about your brand, products and/or services are generated by people outside your company - such as journalists, editors, internet users, and so on. Think of it as word-of-mouth marketing in which people write about or discuss your brand and convey why you are worth paying attention to.

Why Focus on Earned Media?

Earned media has been shown to generate far more trust than any marketing material a company issues. High trust value means more willingness to engage with you and your content, and what you sell. Therefore, it also means increased sales and profits.

What Are the Best Ways to Encourage Earned Media?

1. Set your goals

Your goals can be more:

* Traffic

* Subscribers

* Sales

* Brand recognition

Set a goal for each press release you issue and each piece of content you create. Then measure your success in relation to your goal.

2. Create content for each goal

* If you want more traffic, publishing a great article or video can help.

* If you want more subscribers, create a free special report or ecourse. Set up a new list in your email marketing platform. Create a sign-up form and copy and paste it to a landing page with your free offer. Then track the number of people who sign up.

* Every time you launch a new product, announce it and track sales. Create special sales and offers from time to time, related to current events, special dates, holidays and so on. Then track your results.

* Use social media to increase the reach of your brand. Every time you publish new content, promote it using social media linking buttons and/or announce it at your social media accounts. Include a call to action that encourages them to like or share the information.

3. Set up a great media center at your site

Make it easy for media representatives such as reporters or top bloggers to work with you by having a media center that includes all the information they need to know about your company, without them having to hunt all over the place for it.

Include links to every press release you publish.

4. Use a press release distribution service

This will help you spread the word about your business quickly and easily, and could result in media pickups in top publications. Journalists are always looking for great content of real value to their readership.

5. Pitch to the media

If you have an important breaking story, pitch it directly to media representatives who are interested in your niche. Getting their contact information will take some research, and constructing a good pitch will take some time and effort as you approach each journalist one at a time. However, the rewards can be well worth it in terms of all your business goals.