Inspire people with your own content and channels, consolidate your own expert status and create brand awareness. Good content achieves all of this. But what data is crucial when it comes to measuring and quantifying the impact of your own content? In this blog article, you will learn what you should consider when creating your owned media content and how sustainable digital monitoring can help you adapt your digital strategy in the long term.
In our monitoring blog series, we analyze the opportunities and threats that companies should look out for in their paid, earned, and owned media monitoring activities. Today you will learn everything about the area of owned media monitoring and how you can succeed in addressing your target group as precisely as possible.
What are owned media actually?
Owned media channels refer to a company’s in-house digital channels over which it has complete communication control. In other words: Your content, on your own channels in all possible forms and aspects. Owned media allows you to tell your story the way you want.
Owned media is a broad term and can mean content on your website or blog, but your newsletter, e-books and whitepapers you create or webinars and workshops distributed via digital channels are just as much owned media content. There is a need for discussion regarding your presence on social media channels. Although legally you have no power of disposal over the shared data, you do use these channels with your own produced content. Even though some marketers speak of shared media here, we have decided to stick with the term owned media for the purposes of this article.
A central concept in the field of owned media is that of content. This refers to the content that you make available to your audience. But why is good content that offers added value for your target group so crucial to success when it comes to your own owned media strategy?
Content builds trust
The biggest problem with owned media content is the distrust that is placed on corporate content. What is communicated by companies is quickly advertising, and everyone tries to avoid unwanted advertising as much as possible. This is where content comes into play: By providing your audience with content that has utility and added value, you gain the necessary trust and, incidentally and with a fine blade, have the opportunity to get your brand messages and products to the man and woman. Owned media thus offer the chance to direct messages specifically to your desired target group through the back door.
The benefit is a broad term here. It can mean concrete tips and assistance that help to solve problems. For example, you can pass on your expert knowledge in a certain area to your audience and consolidate your status as an expert. But content that entertains also fulfills an added value. Content that adds value to your target audience is the key element that determines whether your digital strategy is successful or not. Good content that is subsequently distributed via the appropriate digital channels also leads to the consolidation of expert status and can create brand awareness. In short: it sets you apart from your competitors. Likewise, useful content is shared particularly often and willingly on social media. Google also appreciates content with added value, which in turn boosts a company’s ranking in Google searches.
What to look out for when creating your owned media content
Poor, generic, and interchangeable content that contains obvious advertising messages, on the other hand, has the opposite effect. This (lack of) strategy and disregard for the wishes and needs of your target group leads to more and more customers turning away from you and classifying your company as less credible. This does not only apply to your published content, but also to the entire image of your company. Attracting new customers is difficult in the beginning without the help of paid distribution on paid media channels. Unless your content offers such added value that it spreads virally. However, few succeed intentionally and your goal at the outset should be to create content that matches your audience’s interests and differentiates you from your content.
Creating content that is sustainable and that adds real value is, in many cases, expensive, time-consuming, and laborious. It is not a task that can be done on the side by a single staff member. But how do you manage to check whether your content is actually having the desired effect and ultimately consolidating your expert status, leading to more sales and brand awareness? This is where sustainable digital monitoring of your owned media content comes into play.
Sustainable Owned Media Monitoring
Monitoring means observing your digital content. Almost all companies do this. However, they are often not very targeted and do not derive the necessary adjustments to their own digital strategy from the data. Sustainable strategic decisions based on monitoring data are the exception. It is not uncommon for key figures to be collected that says little about the real performance of the owned media content. Data that make it possible to get to know one’s own target group even better in order to tailor one’s own content even better to the audience’s needs remain unnoticed. Sustainable monitoring is therefore less a question of time and cost but rather means that exactly those key figures and data are collected and analyzed that are decisive and meaningful for the individual company’s success.
What to look out for when monitoring your owned media content
Sustainable digital monitoring of your owned media content should cover two major areas: Channels and content. On the one hand, it is important to measure the performance of your digital channels. On the other hand, the impact and performance of your digital content is crucial.
Monitoring the performance of your digital channels
Ask the following questions about the data collected: Am I reaching the desired target group on the digital channels I play? And: Does my target group feel comfortable on the channels, like to stay longer and make purchasing decisions? As is so often the case, practice makes perfect. After a few attempts, it will be easy for you to estimate the optimal times to publish your Owned Media content on the respective channels. If you see from the data that the desired target group is only reached sub-optimally on a certain channel, you should consider whether the content would not be better off on another channel and prepared in a slightly different way. Basically, each digital channel has its own rules and appeals to different target groups. However, it is important not to overreach yourself. Play on the channels that your target group uses most often and create content that can ideally be distributed on several channels without much effort. Monitor key figures over longer periods of time and adapt your digital strategy to the needs of your audience.
Monitoring the performance of your digital content
The aim here is to measure the impact of one’s own content. The specific key figures that are collected differ depending on the company’s objectives. If you want to reach new target groups and customers in the digital space or consolidate your expert status, you will pay more attention to organic reach. Those who want to entertain and inform existing target groups with their content will probably pay attention to the rate of meaningful interactions with the owned media content. For those who are exclusively concerned with selling their own products and services, the conversions that are stimulated by owned media content are important. An overriding goal can also be the improvement of search engine rankings, which is stimulated by the production of high-quality content.
Total control of communication
The targeted collection and analysis of appropriate data is crucial for your in-house digital strategy. Only those who maintain an overview here can optimise their in-house digital strategy and adapt it to the dynamic needs of their own target group. How can you succeed in this? Through a sustainable monitoring network that goes beyond the mere collection of individual key figures, reveals undreamt-of potential and responds to the dynamic needs, requirements and wishes of your target group.
You want to create content that exactly fits your target group? You want to optimise your digital channels and make your audience feel comfortable? sonicboom supports you in establishing a sustainable digital monitoring network that gives you full digital communication control over your owned media content. We see ourselves as an independent partner who helps you to collect the key figures that are individually relevant to you and enable you to optimize your digital strategy.