139: Earned Media Does Not = Influencer Marketing

Many brand and digital marketers are poorly confusing influencer marketing with earned media. Some of these marketers may be making innocent mistakes. However, some very well know the difference but are pretending that they don't. As a result they are negatively impacting their brand perception and damaging relationships with the people who they claim they want to embrace and invite closer to their brand. 

Yes, this is the elephant in the room for many brand marketers and the influencers, thought leaders and people who they are reaching out to begging for tweets, likes, free blog posts or even days spent at an event on behalf of the brand with zero compensation. The brands make themselves foolishly believe they don't need to compensate the influencer for their time since they are bucketing the engagement into "earned media." 

Let me put this very simply for you. If you are paying for travel, accommodations, fancy dinners and entertainment it is not earned media. 

Earned media is media that you earn. It's not media that you pay for. It's not dependable. It's not something you can wine and dine an influencer for and expect to get measurable results. 

Learning how to integrate earned, paid and owned media is key to success for digital marketers. 

Check out the 139th episode of the Social Zoom Factor podcast for some real talk on why brands must quit confusing earned media with influencer marketing now. I share with you a story of how one of the largest car manufacturers in the world reach out to me asking for 5 days of my time at an event without any compensation and claiming they couldn't compensate for time as it fell into the category of "earned media." Seriously people, let's get real on this topic. It's time we make the leaders in this industry accountable. They need to walk the walk,not just talk the talk. 

This episode is part of a new “in a nutshell" mini-series of the Social Zoom Factor podcast to do a deep dive on the 3 types of media you must understand if you want to be successful in the online world and with digital marketing. I provided a quick overview of paid, earned and owned media in episode 138 of the Social Zoom Factor podcast. 

 Be sure to subscribe to the entire series on iTunes, Stitcher or SoundCloud!

In this 15 minute podcast you will learn: 

• Difference between earned media and influencer marketing 
• Why influencer marketing is not necessarily earned media 
• Importance of valuing relationships over reach, followers, Klout scores 
• Why brands must value time of influencers and thought leaders they want to work with 
• Tips to best use influencer marketing 
• The difference between paid, earned and owned media
• How to avoid blurring earned and paid media