Imagine you make a search on your brand and find an article or blog post about your product or service on the internet, an article or a news piece that a media house(s) did on your brand which you paid nothing for, or turning on the TV and watching your brand splashed on the 9 o’clock news: that is the power of earned media.
Earned media refers to any material written about you or your brand that you didn’t pay for, neither did you create its content. It is that publicity that is not generated by your company or anyone affiliated with your company. Earned media is made up of organic content put out by customers, social media fans, bloggers or journalists which includes mentions on TV/radio, blog posts about your business or product, magazine and newspaper articles, etc.
In PR, one of the measures of the return on investment is that earned media wins. The key point of PR is that companies and brands build trust, reputation and legitimacy which then make up the foundations that a brand needs to grow and achieve its goals. You can achieve these goals by simply getting the right narrative out there.
Public relations provide brands the opportunity to tap into earned media channels. Through the relationships PR professionals have built with the media over the years, PR professionals can charm their way into getting brands featured in mainstream media outlets like TV news programs, newspapers, radio talk shows, magazines etc. Public relations pull doesn’t just end with the mainstream media outlets, they cross into the digital sphere like blogs, social media, and search engines (SEO).
One hallmark of public relations, Earned media is credible, cost-effective and can be integrated with other techniques to achieve the public relations strategy.