Owned channels are digital marketing and media channels that brands control and manage directly. These channels, like company websites, blogs, social media profiles, email newsletters, and mobile apps, allow brands to fully customize their content and interact with their audience.
Unowned channels are platforms that brands don’t directly control. These platforms, such as social media networks, online marketplaces, review websites, and news outlets, are typically run by influencers, bloggers, or third-party entities. While brands can engage with their audience on these platforms, they have less control over things like content moderation and platform policies.
Taking Advantage of Owned Channels
Full Control and Customization
Owned channels provide brands with complete control and customization over content and messaging. Brands can tailor their owned channels to align with their brand identity, values, and objectives, ensuring consistency and authenticity in communication.
Direct Audience Engagement
Owned channels enable brands to directly engage with their audiences without outside stakeholders or external influence. Brands can interact with customers, respond to inquiries, and gather feedback in real-time, fostering stronger relationships and brand loyalty.
Data Ownership and Insights
Brands own the data generated from interactions on owned channels, allowing for deeper insights into audience behavior, preferences, and demographics. This data can inform content marketing and social media marketing strategies, content creation, and product development, driving business growth and innovation.
Leveraging Unowned Channels
Expand Reach and Exposure with Earned Media
Unowned channels provide brands with access to larger audiences and broader exposure. By participating on popular platforms and engaging with users where they are, companies can increase brand awareness and reach new potential customers.
With Socialie by PhotoShelter, expanding your reach outside owned channels is an automated process. Quickly identify all channels that influence your target audiences. Then, empower your influencers and advocates with content aimed to amplify your brand. From there, earned media, or publicity from others, will elevate your marketing efforts and increase exposure. On average brands are able to 10X their reach on social media when leveraging a social content distribution platform like Socialie.
Social Proof and Credibility as a Marketing Strategy
Unowned channels offer social proof and credibility through user-generated content, reviews, and word-of-mouth endorsements. Positive feedback and recommendations from satisfied customers on unowned channels can build trust and credibility for the brand. Authentic content resonates with fans and consumers online. Socialie allows you to request content on-demand from partners, influencers, and more and build out a powerful content engine that boosts credibility across social media platforms.
Amplify Content Distribution
Brands can leverage the network effects of unowned channels to amplify their message and reach a larger audience organically. Distributing content out to external channels beyond your own brand is an effective way to tap into new markets and transform your social media marketing strategy.
Every company has a network of stakeholders that surround their brand, whether it’s corporate partners, influencers, talent, athletes, endorsees, broadcasters, or employees. Expanding a brand’s presence on social media with these stakeholders in mind means activating across a diverse ecosystem, and ultimately driving traffic back to your business.
How to Maximize Owned and Unowned Channels
Integration and Consistency
Integrate owned and unowned channels into a cohesive marketing strategy that aligns with brand objectives and values. Maintain consistency in messaging, branding, and customer experience across all channels to reinforce brand identity and foster trust.
Audience Segmentation and Targeting
Segment and target audiences based on their preferences, behaviors, and demographics across owned and unowned channels. Tailor content and messaging to resonate with specific audience segments, maximizing engagement and conversion rates.
Analytics and Optimization
Use analytics and performance metrics to track and measure the effectiveness of owned and unowned channel strategies. Identify areas for improvement, optimize content and campaigns, and iterate based on data-driven insights to drive better results.
With Socialie, you can get an extra level of analysis by comparing performance of your brand content and owned channels vs the performance of other content on unowned channels. With these insights, you can iterate your content strategy and distribute more of what works to continue driving results.
Owned channels offer brands full control and customization, direct audience engagement, and data ownership, while unowned channels provide expanded reach and exposure, social proof and credibility, and amplified content distribution. By leveraging a combination of owned and unowned channels strategically, brands can maximize their reach, engagement, and impact, driving business growth and success in today’s digital landscape.
Curious how the top growing brands do it? Check out their stories:
- Buffalo Bills reach 20M fans through Socialie and PhotoShelter workflows
- ATP reaches fans in real time with automated content workflow
- San Francisco 49ers run their superbowl content workflows with Socialie and PhotoShelter
Ready to expand your brand by leveraging both owned and unowned channels? Get started today with PhotoShelter.