Shared Media – Brand social web participation and interaction with consumers on content on sites like Facebook, Twitter and YouTube that results in content is “shared media” since it’s a result of a shared interaction. Because of the nature of social sharing and engagement on social media sites, Shared Media can propagate across an individual’s network to others, and so on and so on. Paid and Owned Media can inspire Shared Media. Shared Media can inspire Earned Media.
Shared Media is the documented engagement between a brand and a user where that engagement is reflected in both of their networks and not fully owned by either entity. In layman’s terms, when you like or comment on a brand’s Status Update or post on the wall of a brand’s Facebook page, a physical record of your action now exists on both the brand’s Page and your personal Profile. The brand doesn’t exclusively own the content, nor do you. The content is partially owned and partially earned. Since that gets a little confusing, it’s better to think of that content as now being Shared Media.
Shared media comes about when brands invite public participation in content creation. Many like to say that it requires a company or organization to “give up control” over their message, but that’s simply not true. Brand owners are just as much in control of their message today as they ever were (which is to say, only partially). It is possible to invite public participation and still have a measure of control over the outcome and use of the content.
Shared media is about the co-creation of content and media between brands and community. Brand social web participation and interaction with consumers on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that results in content is "shared media" since it's a result of a shared interaction. Because of the nature of social sharing and engagement on social media sites, shared media can propagate across an individual's network to others, and so on and so on. Paid and owned media can inspire shared media. Shared media can inspire earned media. One of my favorite examples of co-created or shared media is Dell's IdeaStorm community.
Giving props to Jeremiah, Todd Defren also looked at the integration of earned, owned and paid, but clearly gives more credence to PR and its grounding in the earned media space. He also bucketed “shared” media, i.e., those RTs, Likes, Pins, and Shares, into the “earned” category:
“…the value of Earned Media is only growing, especially if by “earned media” you include in your definition the unbiased, 3rd party citations of consumers themselves, a.k.a. Word of Mouth. And why wouldn’t you include “Social” under the “Earned Media” banner?”
I think in a sense he’s right. First, studies have shown that most of the dominant online conversations we stumble across in our social networks originated from traditional media sources. Today, IMHO, these extend beyond The New York Times and Reuters to include TechCrunch, Politico, The Daily Beast and countless others. With regard to “social” falling into the “earned” category, one could say that catalyzing a community to share content is indeed an earned achievement.
Shared media is about the co-creation of content and media between brands and community. Brand social web participation and interaction with consumers on sites like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube that results in content is “shared media” since it’s a result of a shared interaction. Because of the nature of social sharing and engagement on social media sites, shared media can propagate across an individual’s network to others, and so on and so on. Paid and owned media can inspire shared media and shared media can inspire earned media.
Anyone can play on an open platform. It’s about us not just about me. We can all engage as equals. Aka social media.
Sure, "shared" media is in a sense earned media, but it is pretty much out of the hands of the communications manager. It just occurs when one or more of the other three media types are deftly used to capture imaginations.
