graphic courtesy of web-strategist.com
Recently I read an excellent piece on content marketing from Jeremiah Owyang. It talks about understanding the different types of content that make up a comprehensive content marketing effort.
I’ve found this kind of segmentation increasingly useful as clients become more sophisticated in their content marketing programs. Firstly, it’s helpful because despite its increasing popularity and adoption levels content marketing still means different things to different people. (See here for a video definition from my StoryTech Consulting site).
More broadly, classifying the different types of content helps integrate a marketing effort and ensures that all types of content are on message and complementary to each other. Owyang uses the classifications of Paid (advertising), Owned (your own published content) and Earned, which he defines as any kind of social media or traditional media coverage.
I refine that last category further. Earned media for my clients still means placed stories through media outreach. For content distributed through social media channels, we like to call that Shared. Since everything has to have an acronym, I use PESO – Paid, Earned, Shared and Owned. PESO has been helpful for clients to keep their different kinds of content in focus and in synch.
The majority of my consulting work is in the Owned and Shared categories, but it’s important to keep the overall mix in mind. Together they make up your marketing “ensemble,” the musical term Owyang uses.
See more on this below in a report from Owyang’s Altimeter Group.