The document provides an overview of strategies for generating earned, owned, and paid media to reach one's target audience through social media. It discusses identifying relevant influencers and bloggers, establishing incentives for them to engage with your content, and effectively pitching them. It also covers creating a content calendar and community guidelines for owned channels, using paid platforms like Facebook ads, and tools for tracking engagement. The overall aim is to provide a simple framework for marketers to communicate effectively with their target communities online through different media types.

1. COMMUNITY
IS KING
Reach Your Dream Audience
through Social Media
BRENDAN GAHAN

2. This is not a list of 83 Social Media Tips
I’m assuming you’re two steps deep into the basic communication framework:
1
2
You have a deep understanding of your audience
You understand their hopes and fears, you know what content they respond to, where
they like to spend time, and their biggest pain points. Ideally you’ve actually spoken to a
few people in your target market.
You know the story you want to tell
You have a strong grasp on what you want to say and how you want to say it. You’ve
paid attention to common themes and insider language. You know the narrative.
2
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

3. First, get to know media types
You start with the three categories of media that are possible to generate online,
categorized like this:
Earned Media
Buzz you generate (i.e., bloggers talking about you)
Owned Media
Distribution through the channels you operate
Paid Media
Ads/awareness you buy
3
Let’s dig into each.

4. Generate earned media step-by-step
Within the earned media space and engaging online influencers, take a three-step
approach:
Identify Relevant Targets
Establish Incentive
Engage Effectively
(i.e., writers, influencers,
bloggers in the space)
(i.e., what the benefit is to
them)
(i.e., reach out to them via
email, phone, etc.)
We’ll break out the individual tasks contained in each of these steps.
4
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

5. How to identify targets
IDENTIFY
If you know your audience well, you have a good idea of what
they’re reading online.
1
3
Start with sites you know.
Identify the contributors.
2
Identify additional sites.
http://www.similarsites.com/
Visit the site blogroll.
Blogs cross promote each other.
STARTING OUT?
Search for blogs by using any of these sites as a jumping off point:
http://blogsearch.google.com/
http://www.icerocket.com/
http://alltop.com/
5
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

6. Collect data points along the way
IDENTIFY
Collect data on targets you’ve identified in an Excel or Google doc.
Break this out into five basic sections (tweak to suit your needs):
-
Name
URL
Contact info
Why they're relevant
Engagement (comments, shares, likes, etc per post)
Reach (size of their total audience)
IMPORTANT:
Whittle it down to the 5-10 most relevant outlets.
RELEVANCE OVER REACH
6
A blog with 10M unique monthly
visitors that covers a range of topics is
less valuable than one that has 1K
unique monthly visitors and covers
your topic exclusively.

7. SIDENOTE
IDENTIFY
The Power of YouTube
YouTube creators drive massive engagement–
oftentimes more so than blogs.
Get started like this:
170
YOUTUBE CHANNELS PASSED
1 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
in the first half of 2013
1. Search YouTube
See who’s already evangelizing your brand,
product, topic.
...there are now
317
2. Get Contact Info
Check the ‘About’ section of their channel.
CHANNELS with more than
1 MILLION SUBSCRIBERS
You can also search a directory of creators
by their channel statistics at
http://vidstatsx.com/.
7
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

8. How to establish an incentive
INCENTIVIZE
When you reach out to people you want to answer two questions:
1
Why should this person
share my story?
2
Ideally you help your target
achieve their goals (which
requires you know what they
are in the first place).
!
What value can I offer to
them and their audience?
In a similar vein, make sure
your offering actually helps
the audience. Make it
concrete.
Make it easy to say yes. Can you offer an exclusive trial of your product, interviews
with the founders? What can you do to build a relationship and make it worth their
time to check out your product or content?
8
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

9. How to engage effectively
ENGAGE
Bloggers, YouTubers, thought leaders, and influencers get pitched
constantly. Here’s how to engage them:
Have a Pre-Existing Relationship
Gets the best results.
PHONE TAG
Get an Introduction
Search Facebook and LinkedIn to see if you have
mutual connections.
Cultivate the Relationship
Comment on their blog, interact with them on
Twitter—add value to them over time.
Cold Pitch
Make it as custom as possible. Never create a
template email and spam people. Use their actual
name, call out specifics of their work.
Tease what you've got
in your email, and
escalate to a phone call
as soon as possible.
This allows you to
become a person and
build a relationship vs.
remain just another
email in their inbox.
9
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

10. SIDENOTE
ENGAGE
Pitching can get tricky
To make pitching easier, here’s a template.
Hi (Name),
PITCH 101
I wanted to reach out because [insert brief explanation
of what you’re doing – for ex, launching an album]. I
thought it might be relevant for [site] because [insert
example of similar stories covered by blogger in the
past – for ex, they covered a similar artist and the post
performed well]. Any chance you’d think it would be a
good fit?
If you need help framing
your pitch or coming up
with ideas, I highly
recommend you read
these two posts on how
to pitch a blogger:
I’d love to hop on the phone [insert time] if you think its
something you’d be interested in [insert reference to
incentive – for example, you could potentially provide a
sneak peak to the demo before launch]. Just let me
know!
How to Pitch Bloggers
– Make it a Win/Win/
Win Situation
Best,
[insert name]
20 Tips for Pitching
Bloggers
10
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

11. Now we’ll discuss owned media
When interacting with target online communities, e.g., through Facebook,
Twitter, or a blog, you can break things out into two categories:
Proactive Communications
Events/initiatives you can plan for.
Reactive Communications
Responding to the community, current events, or
whatever is happening in real time.
11
Let’s hack away
at this....

12. Being a proactive communicator
On the proactive side you'll want to create content calendars highlighting:
Relevant holidays
Events
Product launches
Industry milestones
Then, you’ll want to plan what you're going to say.
Click here for a great example of a content calendar template you can use.
12
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

13. Learning to react in real time
On the reactive side, create guidelines outlining the tone for the social media
profiles:
Do’s and don’ts on what can be said
Who is allowed to say it
When responses should go out
How to resolve conflicts
Create an escalation chart (if you've got a client that will need to weigh
in on some approvals).
Use a community management tool to track fan engagement and schedule posts.
Examples for
Facebook & Twitter:
Hootsuite
Buffer App
13
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

14. And now paid media (if you have budget)
To distribute content quickly, paid media can be a great option.
Across Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, buy directly through the platform
with small scale buys (i.e., less than $5k-10k).
Links to the ad platforms:
Twitter Ads
Facebook Ads
YouTube Ads
Each platform has self-serve advertising platforms with varying complexity.
Facebook
Twitter and YouTube
COMPLEXITY
14
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

15. It’s important to track your progress
Start out with some of the great free options:
PeopleBrowsr
to get emails of
mentions around key
Facebook Insights
to get emails of
mentions around key
words that you choose.
Google News Alerts
to get emails of
mentions around key
words that you choose.
Topsy
to get emails of
mentions around key
Wildfire
social monitoring tool
is great if you want to
do competitive
benchmarking.
Each of the above services include a wealth of getting started materials and best practice case studies.
15
INTRO
OVERVIEW
EARNED
OWNED
PAID
TRACKING

16. And that’s it. Simple right?
Truth is, the basic stuff is simple—marketers,
pundits, gurus, and “ninjas” overcomplicate
this form of communication.
But: simplicity does not equate ease.
Successfully executing these tactics takes a
great deal of time and effort.
However, with this information you can begin
to generate awareness and understand what’s
working for you.
REMEMBER
Stick with the fundamentals:
Where is my audience spending
time?
How can I provide value?
How do I engage my existing
community?
Where can I amplify my efforts
through paid media?
How do I track it?
So… what community are
you going to reach?

17. COMMUNITY
IS KING
BRENDAN GAHAN
Visit Brendan’s blog to read more social media strategies.