A good owned media strategy can build your reputation both as a brand and as a thought leader. Not only does using your owned media build trust, but it also boosts your overall media outreach efforts. For this reason, a good media outreach campaign should always include plans for your owned media.

What is owned media?

Your owned media are any media channels which your brand has total control over. You decide what content to produce and when. Owned media also gives you direct access to your target audience, without relying on someone else to tell your story.

Do you need help producing content for your owned media channels? An agency like Pressfarm can step in to help with that.

Some examples of owned media channels

• Company website: Your website is one of the first places someone who is curious about you will go for more information. For this reason, you should invest effort in keeping it updated and educational.
• Email campaigns: Sending regular updates to people on your mailing list is a great way to keep them plugged into what’s going on with your company. The people who open and read these emails are highly likely to be interested in news about your company.
• Social media channels: 45% of the world’s population are active daily users of social media. Your social media channels can therefore be an effective place to build long-term relationships with the public and cultivate thought leadership.
• Video channels, blogs, and podcasts: These channels can be used to share valuable content. Speak about topics that people want to learn more about so that you can build a reputation as a trusted source of information in the industry. In particular, video channels can be a useful place to share tutorials on how to use some of your products or services. Using these channels consistently will help you establish yourself as a thought leader over time.
• Physical newsletters: Some companies still mail physical newsletters to their clients. This is especially useful if your target audience consists of older people. As with email campaigns, physical newsletters are an effective way to keep clients in the loop of what is going on.

Regardless of how you adapt your content for each of these platforms, your owned media channels should be consistent with your overall brand. In addition, they should support your broader media strategy. 

Advantages of owned media

• It’s within your control: With these media channels, you can control the story being told about your brand. Since it’s within your control, you can also change your strategy as your needs change.
• There is no extra cost: Since you’re the one running your owned media channels, you don’t have to spend extra money on an owned media strategy. 

Paid media gives you control over the brand story being told and earned media comes at no extra cost. With owned media, you can enjoy the best of both worlds.

• It can generate earned media: A successful owned media strategy can help your brand go viral. In other words, by capturing the attention online, you will earn free media coverage and mentions. This is especially true if you spark interest among influencers and thought leaders in your industry.

Overall, a good owned media strategy is key because it helps to build your brand image. Your reputation influences your success as a brand. For this reason, it is worthwhile to make your owned media a central part of your overall outreach strategy.

So, how do you build a successful owned media outreach strategy? 

Developing a good owned media strategy isn’t complicated once you know what you need. Let’s break this down into 7 practical steps:

1. Assess your needs

The first step of any successful media outreach strategy is analysing your needs and deciding what you want your media outreach to achieve. Most of the time, your needs will be determined by the challenges you’re experiencing, your audience, and the platforms you’re using. Your needs can change with time, depending on your target audience and your owned media platforms.

Assessing your needs will help you develop goals for your owned media strategy. By developing goals you’ll make it easier to evaluate the results of your media efforts later on.

2. Define your target audience

In order to produce valuable content, you need to first understand who your target audience is and what matters to them. If they are tech gurus who are always tinkering with new products, then they would appreciate tech advice and updates. If they’re interested in trends in the industry, then you can share industry reports and news with them.

The only way you will know what kind of content your audience wants to see from you is by taking the time to build a profile of your target audience. What kind of people does this audience consist of? What is their everyday life like and what do they care about?

3. Create good quality content

Once you have understood who your target audience is, you can be more confident about producing content that they will value.

How do you create valuable content?

a) Share information that people will care about

It’s easy to produce valuable content for social media and your other owned media channels. Valuable content is:

• Meaningful: Meet the needs of your target audience.
• Objective: Focus on sharing information rather than increasing sales.
• Educational: Teach your audience something new.
• Visual: Don’t just tell, show. Offer visuals like videos and infographics to illustrate your points.
• Unique: Don’t just repackage the same information your competitors are sharing. Say something new that people haven’t heard before, in a form they’ve never seen before. If you can do this, then you’ll stand out from the crowd.
• Conversational: Invite dialogue. Initiating conversations will help you connect with your audience. Go a step further by replying to comments from your audience – this will help them feel heard and strengthen your connection.
• Consistent: Produce content regularly to build interest. This content should also be consistent with your overall branding. You should feel free to adjust the style to fit the needs of different platforms. However, overall you should have one cohesive brand voice.

b) Create a central content hub

In most cases, your central content hub will be your website. This is where you post the majority of your content before you repurpose it for use elsewhere. For example, you could give blog articles, videos, and infographics a home on different pages on your website. Once you have built a central home for this content, you can decide how to distribute it to the rest of your platforms.

Many brands also have online newsrooms on their website, and these can also make good content hubs. With an online newsroom, you can share information that both journalists and your target audience would find useful. For example, you can share the history of your company and details about the team behind it. You can also share press releases as well as details of any previous press coverage which your company has earned. Proof of press release coverage is a good source of social proof for any journalists considering writing a story about you in the present.

Having a home for this content makes it easier for curious website visitors to find what they’re looking for. It also increases the chances that they will stumble upon content that is related to their original search. In addition, a central content hub increases your SEO optimization by helping search engines find and rank your content.

Essentially, a central hub of information should help build a loyal audience. These prospective clients will keep your brand top of mind and rely on you for information and education.

c) Experiment with different strategies

Consistency is key, but it’s also important to experiment so you can find a formula that works for you. Test the effectiveness of different types of content (text and visuals) and different posting times on social media.

Try different strategies for engaging different segments of your audience. For example, in a mailing list, you can send a special offer to people who aren’t engaging anymore. On Facebook, you can also target your messaging by posting in special interest groups.

d) Collaborate with other content creators

Partnering with other thought leaders to create valuable content will not only widen your professional network but also help you reach a wider audience. You can collaborate with other thought leaders by creating an eBook, developing a white paper, or hosting a webinar together, for example. You can also partner with another thought leader to publish guest posts on their site.

By collaborating with another content creator, you can generate curiosity about your brand among their audience. In this way, you can drive more traffic to your website over time.

e) Optimize your media

In order to reach your target audience effectively, you should tailor your content for an online audience. One way to do this is by search engine optimization – using keywords that will be picked up by search engines. Another way to do this is by adjusting your content for different platforms.

Optimizing your content for each platform will help you to connect effectively with your target audience on each platform.

f) Drive traffic

It is also important to drive traffic to your owned media to maximize your exposure. Paid media like online advertisements can help spark curiosity in your brand and direct people to your owned media channels for more information.

g) Evaluate the results

At the end of any media campaign, it is crucial to evaluate your results. Measure your outcomes against the goals you had set in the beginning. In doing so, you can gauge the success of your efforts.

h) Refine your approach

Once you have evaluated your results, you can adjust your future strategy accordingly. You should always be striving to build upon what works and tweak what hasn’t worked until you have a foolproof strategy.

As you can see, developing a successful owned media strategy isn’t difficult. On the contrary, telling your own story and connecting directly with your target audience should be a fun and exciting process.

Some of Pressfarm’s packages can help you create content like eye-catching media kits and engaging feature stories for your owned media. In addition, curated media lists and a media database of over 1 million journalists can help you do media outreach for your owned media channels, thus boosting your web traffic. Check these packages out and let us help with your media strategy.