Christopher Wallace

COM 6630 Assignment #3

 

Earned media can be a company’s greatest asset in marketing. This happens when other influencers, creatives, businesses, and other partnerships share your own media and content that you haven’t created or paid for yourself. By forging partnerships and relations with other outlets, you create the opportunity for your content to grow in a tree-like fashion. When your media is shared, that spreads to another outlet’s system of followers. This creates the chance for that system to also invest in and share your content. This will further your reach to your audience and protentional audience members as you partner with those who share your media.

To acquire earned media, be ready to invest in other companies. This includes sharing their media, investing financially in it, and even partnering with the organization. Social media platforms are primary way to do this. You could create posts on your main page to highlight another company or run their ads like you would see in a newspaper. Financially, you don’t have to pay for them to share your media but donating to their cause would give you grace in the other organizations eye and prompt them to support you in the future as someone who invests in their cause. Earned media is attain by positive publicity. It is important that you do everything you can to receive a positive image in other organizations’ sight. When other organizations see your value and respect your cause, they will share your media. It is then that you have “earned media.”

Within the PESO model, earned media is meant to serve as the potential outcome of your actions. Think of it as, “What will my actions and communication with this organization produce?’. Think of earned media as a “result”. Its purpose within the PESO model is to serve as awareness and force you to plan ahead when it comes to the affects of your communications, relations, and sharing.

One organization I would like to highlight is one within Troy. This organization is Troy University’s Sound of the South Marching Band. Currently, I serve as the one who produces the band’s professional digital content such as photos and video. This content is used to increase recruitment within the band primarily, but it is also my job to regulate what is published. The process of this media involves me photographing every home football game, then sharing the band’s media via Facebook. In terms of video, I produce a cinematic promo as well to further recruitment. For these things to be used effectively and successfully in recruiting, it is important for me to build relations as their professional photographer with other organizations such as the Athletics department, the Journalism department, and local churches. These are all organizations that have benefited from the band in some way as well as helping it. The Journalism runs stories on the band more frequently now because I work as their Photography/Graphics manager in the newspaper. I was able to also have last year’s cinematic promo video premiered in four home games by shooting for the athletics department for various sports for potential students to Troy to see; encouraging their participation with the band. Local churches have also lended the band equipment through me produces media for these churches that I had attended for free. For the photography aspect, I worked on photos heavily to make sure they were professional quality before posting. By doing this, I gained a great audience that continues to grow through growing quality of content that I produce. This causes photos of various band members to be shared with their friends and family and so on. Thus, increasing the band’s popularity and recruitment. The biggest challenge for this type of earned media is when band members do not share content. It is situation that requires effort on both ends but produces great results when over 300 people are active in sharing content when I do not have to tell them or pay them to.