Types of Content Media

Hard to believe this is the last week of my principles of social media class. The assignment for this week was to read Chapters 9 and 10 of "Social Media for Strategic Communication." In Chapter 9, I found a lot of information, but I am going to talk about the different types of content media. There are four types of content media discussed in this chapter.

• Paid media is when the company or advertiser is paying for the content to appear in a timeline for a certain amount of money. 

• Earned media is a type of media that is not controlled by brands, this makes it more trustworthy and less biased compared to others. Publicity or promotion of content that does not require payment for the content is a good characteristic of this media.

• Shared media is an interactive medium where conversations and dialogue emerge as the result of the content being shared.

• Owned media is focused on content and the platform you control as a brand, organization, or person. Content posted is usually from your controlled media platforms.

These are brief definitions of each type of media, but I am going to go a little further into detail with these. Paid media is also known as social media advertising or a "pay-to-play" model. This is a very common type of media, and some examples include sponsored ads on Instagram and Facebook, promoted tweets on Twitter, and sponsored ads on Snapchat. A paid influencer can also fall into this category since they are being paid to promote something.

Earned media establishes strong relationships with your audiences and big influencers who will be able to help you grow by spreading your content to their audiences. Earned media has the potential to go along with paid media because of influencers who are compensated, but the whole purpose is to develop trust and relationships with your audience. Some examples of this are media relations, influencer relations, and ambassador endorsements.

Shared media includes many different examples like Facebook group shares, Twitter retweets and comments, LinkedIn shares, Instagram pod discussions, and influencer promotions. These are a few of the examples but shared media is simple, it is anything that can be shared from person to person.

Owned media is anything from your personal platforms. If you control the content, it is owned media. Examples of this are websites, testimonials, blog posts, podcasts, reviews, and e-books. The variety is pretty wide with this type of media, and it allows you to post what you want.

These four types of content media are referred to as the PESO model. This is something I have never heard of before, but it was great to be able to learn about it and I am going to think about it when looking at content media in the future!