Back at it #3 – Inexpensive “Earned Media”

I’m skipping to the second paragraph of http://tinyurl.com/ab3ug3.  If you’re just joining the ‘back at it’ series now, I’ve been picking off pieces in this article about social media that need to be discussed – minus the brainwashing

Earned media is nothing new.  It’s the same phrase and thinking used by PR people.  But there’s an important difference in the social media landscape which is the consumers who add their own layer of messaging to the mix.  (Get it?  That’s the social part.)  In the old days, journalists wrote the stories that were fed to them by PR pros.  Now, anyone with access to the web can add to the earned media a brand may receive.  Today, a blogger from Bowmanville, Ontario is on par with a veteran writer from the Globe and Mail (or am I?)

Although it sounds like a huge benefit, the way VC Guy in the article blankets earned media as less expensive is very misleading.  You get what you pay for with social media too

The only way to compare costs of media is on a cost per basis – like cost per thousand impressions which is a common gauge of cost efficiencies and is a basic currency in online advertising.  Every medium has different messaging capabilities which typically correlates to their cost efficiencies.  For example: a 30-second TV spot is less efficient than a 30-second radio spot because it adds a visual element to the message.  Same thing with online advertising – an over-the-page ad will cost more than a standard leaderboard because of its superior impact and messaging

Same holds for traditional earned media too – a full story is worth a lot more than your name buried in the ninth paragraph of an article

VC Guy probably knows better, and here’s what he wished he could have been quoted as saying:

·         To begin with, not all social media hits (basic exposure to messages) are the same: Is a dedicated Facebook page the same as a one line post buried in a chatroom that no one will ever see?

·         What counts as an engagement?  Is someone reading a chat trail months after a campaign as valuable as an active participant in that discussion.  Is a lurker as good as a fan?

·         Analytics for social media are all over the place still (although this is job #1 for a lot of people), so what are these efficiencies based on?  (We’ve had to calculate this for clients and it’s not easy – how do you obtain the number of readers on a tiny blog?)

·         Marketers will receive both good and bad earned media hits.  Read through any chatroom and you will rarely find that everyone is on the same page.  So does a marketer accept negative hits the same way they take positive ones?

There’s a ton of value in having consumers talk about your brand or interact with it online and offline.  Is it better than seeing a TV spot?  Not sure – what level of engagement and messaging are we comparing? 

Will it cost less to earn media exposure?  I doubt it.  And maybe it shouldn’t if you’re trying to achieve quality engagement with your potential customers.  On the other hand, if you expect to pull off a big campaign for no cost because it’s ‘viral’, what should you expect to get in return?  The reality is most advertisers are going to have to pay for their earned media in one way or another

Pitching social media on its relative costs at this stage of its maturity is a recipe for disaster for marketers, the pros who are doing it, and the medium itself.  Someone needs to pin down what we’re talking about before they say it’s cheaper than everything else.  Next thing you know, social media will be a commodity