The convergence of paid, owned, and earned media has been an important discussion
for some time now. It was a topic of this column on more than one occasion. The nagging question since the coinage of the POE acronym has been “What about shared media?”
When Jeremiah Owyang and I published research on the convergence of paid, owned, and earned media, we noted that our colleague Brian Solis advocated adding “shared” to the mix. Lately, I’ve been having similar discussions with Ketchum’s partner and global director, Nicholas Scibetta, (disclosure: Ketchum is a client of my employer) about that same topic.
Ketchum has adopted not a POE model, but rather PESO (paid, earned, shared, and owned media), for the work it does for its clients.
Where does shared media sit in the paid, owned, and earned equation? What is sharedmedia, anyway? If shared is a goal, how is it achieved? Is all shared media of equal value? To know, you would need a system for measuring it. What would that be?
None of these questions are easy to answer, but here are some top line musings.
What is shared media and where does it sit in the paid/owned/earned equation?
Shared media is a subset of earned media and a form of amplification. Earned media generally tends have a point of view or an editorial bend. Examples might be a blog post or an article around a topic, a video of a product unboxing, or commentary (“I just saw this new movie and it’s really great/totally sucks,” or “This is what the Travon Martin verdict means for race relations in America”). Shared media, on the other hand, tends to be overwhelmingly duplicative. It’s a forward, a retweet, a pin, or (on Facebook) a literal “share.” Perhaps a word or comment is injected, but essentially it’s a pass-along of an essentially unaltered element of content.
It’s worth noting that you can even share shared media, which in a sense, is earning shared. Is your head spinning yet? Mine is!
Please read the rest of this post on iMedia Connection, where it originally published.
Image credit: TheAbundantArtist.com