It used to be that advertising was all about planning reach and frequency. To a certain extent it still is for paid efforts, but when you’re trying to milk free platforms, like your own anchored content through blogs and enewsletters, as well as social media, earned media and embedded editorial, REACH is the name of the game. You CAN control frequency of your own platforms, but not the frequency of earned media. And earned media is a major pillar in your media empire.
Media reach matters.
That point was driven home to me this past week. My son Alex Charleson is a professional longboard racer. He was the 2015 IDF World Junior Champion. We don’t get to choose what our kids get good at! He is currently ramping up for the world circuit, and in an effort to promote himself and benefit his sponsors who pay for his travel, he got his branding and media in order. Call it a prompt from Mom, and a little insider consulting advice. He now has his website up and running www.alexcharleson.com, and linked out and back to all his sponsors and social media channels. While doing that, he finally posted a video to Youtube that was shot last year in Colorado. That prompted the guy who shot and edited it to submit the video to “People are awesome” which has a substantial media reach through Facebook (over 3 million who follow the page and receive daily featured videos), Youtube (with over 1.1 million subscribers) and the www.peopleareawesome.com website (with over 3.6 million subscribers) and countless media features on platforms such as CNN, FOX, TED, Huffington Post, TIME and SUN media.
Low and behold, the video got featured April 27. Link here and scroll to that date to watch it.
My son got the heads up it was being featured about 8 hours after it was posted. The friend from Sweden who had filmed and edited it was a few time zones ahead of him. I watched it on Facebook over coffee in the morning and then shared with friends. It was at 164,000 views, which I thought was pretty remarkable. I went to refill my coffee, and then checked back on the post. It had gone to 167,000 views – up 3,000 in about 2 minutes. That’s when I went investigating the REACH of this channel and was blown away. Within 24 hours it had gone to 276,000 views. Currently it sits at over 335,000 views.
Why the fixation on a longboarding video?
Besides being out marketed by an 18 year old, which still hadn’t had a shower that morning, he had taught me an incredibly important lesson.
The REACH of your media matters. Few of us have platforms with that kind of subscriber base, but if we can tap into earned media with that kind of reach, their vehicle will do all the heavy lifting for us. All apparently while you’re taking a shower!
We of course want to build our owned media platform reach as well as followers on social media platforms, but at the end of the day, we’re unlikely to have the same degree of reach and influence as an established media player. So why not focus on getting earned media on those big number platforms, and then share it out on our other channels – our owned and rented platforms?
In Canada those big reach players might include: The Globe and Mail, Canadian Living, CBC, Huffington Post or Buzz Feed. In the United States CNN, Fox, NBC, the New York Times and Time magazine are but a few. Obviously crazy popular video sharing platforms fall into the mix too. I am now officially addicted to “People are awesome” for my daily adrenaline dose!