Small business and marketing

5.2 Using social media

There is a variety of online media, but these can be broadly categorised into three types (Corcoran, 2009):

  1. owned media (for example, an organisation’s website)
  2. paid media (for example, sponsorship and advertising)
  3. earned media (for example, word-of-mouth (WOM) and viral)

Table 1  Categories of online media

Media

type

Definition Examples The role Benefits Challenges

Owned

media

Channel a brand

controls

  • Website
  • Mobile site
  • Blog
  • Twitter account

Build for long-term relationships with existing potential customers and earned media

  • Control
  • Cost efficiency
  • Longevity
  • Versatility
  • Niche audiences
  • No guarantees
  • Company communication not trusted
  • Takes time to scale
  • Visibility on search engines

 

Paid

media

Brand pays to

leverage a

channel

  • Display ads
  • Paid search
  • Sponsorship

Shift from foundation to a catalyst that feeds owned and creates earned media

  • In demand
  • Immediacy
  • Scale
  • Control
  • Clutter
  • Declining
  • Poor credibility

Earned

media

When customers

become the

channel.

  • Word of mouth
  • Buzz
  • Viral.

Listen and

respond earned

media is often the

result of well-

coordinated

owned and paid media.

  • Most credible
  • Key role in most sales
  • Transparent and lives on.
  • No control
  • Can be negative
  • Scale
  • Hard to measure.
(Corcoran, 2009)

Listen to the first three minutes of this ten-minute audio where A.J. Leon gives examples of businesses successfully using social media to sell.

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Activity 6

Allow about 15 minutes

Now consider the role of social media possibilities for one of the case studies, Bike-a-lot.

Make notes in the following table for each type of media. Then click on ‘save and reveal comment’ to view our thoughts.

Owned media
Paid media
Earned media