The earned media evolution - Notified takes the lead

Notified is on the way to enter a new exciting phase with the launch of a whole new product coming up. As the founders of Notified we would like to take the opportunity to personally tell you our story and give you some clues as to what is coming next.

We’re Marcus and Kristopher, co-founders of Notified. As we are entering a new exciting phase we would like to take the opportunity to personally tell you our story and where we are heading next. 

Social media sparked the growth of a new company

The year 2009 is in many ways etched in our memory. By that time social media was still in its infancy, not yet proving the power it entails. As more consumer conversations were held online, businesses and organizations were faced with a new challenge. Witnessing this, we had a strong conviction that social media would completely change how you worked with PR and communication. Based on that conviction, it seemed logical that in order to understand how to act, you first needed to know what people were already saying about you online. As first time entrepreneurs, we started engaging conversations with early adopters and avid social media users connected to some of the most admired brands at the time, getting feedback and confirmation that we were heading the right way. And to our great happiness, we were!

That is why the birth of social media in many ways was the birth of Notified. A platform that monitor these social conversations and helps you take relevant actions based on deep insights about your market, brand and audience.

From start-up to helping thousands of brands

Over the past seven years developing Notified, we have grown from a small start-up into an established and still growing, social listening platform provider. Now helping thousands of brands across the globe.

With the release, nearly two years ago, of our sister platform Sparkle, we now also enable our customers to take advantage of user-generated content created online and integrate it into their wider social marketing strategy.

The shift to earned media

During the same time, we have also seen how social media has become an integrated part of the PR and marketing mix. As such, it has evolved to becoming part of maybe the most important communication trend today: earned media.

But before we jump deeper, let’s have a look at what earned media is and why it matters.

”Earned media is media activity related to a company or a brand that is not directly generated by the comapny or its agents but rather by other entities such as journalists or consumers.” Wikipedia

During 2016, more than 2,5 trillion photos were shared on the major social networks. With this staggering amount of content, consumers face endless choices when choosing what message to listen to.  As a result, traditional advertisement in particular is often overlooked as consumers turn to content produced by their peers.

Paid media models are no longer the key influence among consumers. According to Forrester, a whopping 88 % of consumers say that direct advertisement have no influence on their purchasing decision. And with the usage of adblockers facing an increase of 30 % during this year, marketing and communication professionals are facing a serious challenge.

With the evolution of Internet and social media, consumers have gained a completely new way to shape their consumption of advertisement. With the access to shared knowledge, they have also become a more intelligent and less trusting consumer. According to the 2017 Edelman Trust Barometer, 65% of consumer trust lies with academics, journalists and other experts – only seconds after friends and family. Basically, they trust earned media.

Why earned media is still a challenge when it comes to brand communication

Despite this clear shift in consumer trust from paid to earned media, most organizations still focus the majority of their budget on traditional paid and owned media.

When talking to PR and marketing professionals, we have identified a few major challenges facing a more significant shift towards earned media:

• It is time consuming: PR and marketing professionals are still stuck with a lot of manual processes, including finding influencers, managing media relations, updating media lists and monitor content and trends.

• The work process is broken: Commonly, there are a number of teams working with different tools within various business departments. This is making it hard if not impossible to link one activity to another.

• Hard to measure impact on business objectives: PR professionals still rely on ambiguous metrics such as AVE (Advertising Value Equivalency) to motivate their budget. Without a more direct proof of their contribution to overall ROI, they have a hard time arguing for an increased budget.

A new solution soon to be presented