Does content marketing work just on your own sites?

I've been considering the question recently about where it is possible to carry out content marketing. Or to turn this into an actual question: "Can content marketing activity only be done on your own sites?"

My initial answer to this question was a clear "Yes, all CM activity needs to be done on your own sites". Or to put it into more 'consultant speak'... Content Marketing activity only utilises 'Owned' digital sources and does not involve 'Earned' or 'Paid' ones.
Note: Owned online properties are those where you have the ownership and means to change the content. Company brand sites, eCommerce portals, brochureware sites, Facebook pages (where your organisation manages what is posted there) and campaign microsites are all included in this definition.

However, whilst writing a blog post to this effect and therefore thinking it through in more detail... I realised that this initial response might not the correct one. Most content marketing efforts do start on your own sites, but ignoring the paid and earned sources means you are missing out on a significant amount of content marketing potential.

To try and explain my thinking, I've pulled the following quick diagram together:

This diagram tries to explain the following:

1. Your owned properties can be used to push content into the earned space. E.g. Via the use of social sharing tools you can extend the reach and impact of your content.
2. Your earned media can help shape influence and therefore build traffic to your owned media.
3. Paid media can help to directly bring traffic to your site.

This might be presented in some other way that conveys value or link juice more, so as-always I reserve the right to revisit this diagram in some other blog post.

The hybrid roles created by digital

Let's face it, there's lot's strange and merged job descriptions knocking around the online / digital industry. Here's some you may have come across:

• Developer evangelist
• Strategic online project manager
• Chief Digital Officer
• Owned, Paid and Earned Marketer
• Programme Architect

These are all job roles I have seen in the last 12 months (although some of these may be familiar to regular readers as I blogged about the Chief Digital Officer one only a few months ago).  And to be totally transaparent, I've even applied for a consulting role as one of these... although I'm not going to admit which one it is.

 

To some people in the industry these newly-invented titles might seem unnecessary and even a little ego fluffing... but there's no doubt that the new economy is creating new types of jobs that have never arisen before.

 

I think this trend is only going to continue and admit to a slight curiousity as to what wierd ones will appear in the next year or so.

Combining paid, owned and earned media

In a post from earlier this year, I gave my thoughts on the blurring boundaries between paid, owned and earned media http://press20.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/paid-owned-and-earned-blurring.html . I was therefore very keen to read the report from research and advisory company Altimeter Group on 'The Converged Media Imperative'. This paper lays it out clearly, that brands now need to combine the different media channels of paid, owned and earned to get the most from them.
http://www.altimetergroup.com/research/reports/how-brands-must-combine-paid-owned-and-earned-media 

Now to me, this is hardly a revelation and it is great that this report has been published. My post from last April suggested that rather than there being definitive boundaries between the three, there's significant cross-over. And this is the point Altimeter have explained too. In fact our models of this integration are incredibly similar, see below:

My diagram to show the blurring

(The star representing press releases)

Altimeter's diagram showing the convergence of paid, owned & earned

the corporate layers - an idea developed

In a recent post I started to work through my thoughts around the development of McKinsey's company software layer concept. I mentioned that I thought there was at least one obvious omission (e.g. web services) and that a single layer to explain it all was too simple.

So now I find myself putting forward an evolved version of this idea, unashamedly taking McKinsey's model as the basis of it.

Corporate layers

View more PowerPoint from Hayden Sutherland

As you can see from my embedded presentation there are now five proposed layers rather than just two.

1. Core business processes
2. Web services & API’s
3. Owned media such as website(s), Apps, Kiosks, etc.
4. Paid media such as online advertising (PPC, etc.)
5. Earned media such as Social, Word-of-mouth, etc.

Although I believe the lines between owned, paid and earned are now becoming increasingly blurred, there is a place for each of the different communication media in my new model.

Paid, Owned and Earned - blurring boundaries

I recently put some thoughts together for a client on the blurring boundaries between paid, owned and earned media. Take a look at the presentation below on my initial thoughts on this (note: this isn't meant to be comprehensive, as some of this is client-specific)Paid Owned & Earned : The blurring boundaries

View more PowerPoint from Hayden

This theme has also been mentioned by Rebecca Lieb from Altimeter Research, who has given some more specific examples of how the boandaries between these three different media classifications are now very blurred.
http://www.imediaconnection.com/printpage/printpage.aspx?id=31333

To me its clear that both clients and their agencies must eventually integrate all three of these media to get the maximum return on investment (of resource / time and money).