Yesterday we discussed what owned media is and how brands can get the most out of it by using digital marketing. However, another term has crept up into our lexicon and that begs the question what is earned media?

Earned media is content the customer creates. It can vary in degrees but it is highly important for brands who want to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

Some examples of earned media:

• Facebook Likes, Comments and Shares
• Repins on Pinterest
• Retweets
• Foursquare checkins
• Pictures posted to your Facebook page
• Links to your site
• Customer testimonials
• YouTube videos about a brand

Owned media as discussed yesterday is the content you create, but earned media is what gives that content wings. It is how things go viral and how a brand or website can separate themselves from the pack. Earned media in the form of links to your sites and social media mentions are two of the cues that Google uses to rank websites in Google search results.

When a brand creates great content in the form of owned media and then gets great feedback in the form of earned media, it begins to cause a feedback loop between the two. Creating good content brings more people to the site who then “like” it, growing your audience, so when you create another piece of content, your audience is just a bit bigger and that cycle perpetuates itself over and over again. Content is king but it’s still the customers that make it so.