PESO Model – We Don’t Own It

Putting the O in the PESO model

So, it’s the end of the month and we’re all working well past the 6 pm bell to finalise our month-end reports – those reams of numbers and stats that highlight our content-driven efforts over the past 30 days. For a limited time only, Microsoft Excel becomes our new best friend.

But what exactly goes into these reports apart from ‘Paid’, ‘Earned’ and ‘Shared’ content? The missing factor is ‘Owned’ content, which makes up the fourth element of the PESO model. For those who aren’t familiar with it, here’s a refresher:

• Paid – Sponsored content, affiliates
• Earned – Media, influencer and investor relations
• Shared – Social media, partnerships
• And the hero of this blog post…Owned – Employee stories, user-generated content, podcasts, etc.

Owned content is the hero because it involves creating our own content to be shared with our own contacts; it makes us the storytellers, the thought leaders and the creatives. In order to engage the media with our stories, we need to tailor both our content and our approach to each individual journalist.

Both involve a spot of light investigation. I’m not talking about in-depth stalking or launching an inquisition, but instead about reaching out to media representatives as human beings with hobbies, passions, personalities and preferences. We need to learn about them and tune into their interests to create authentic, meaningful and relevant content that we know will make them tick. At the same time, we must also develop an understanding of their research methodology when writing a story, the challenges they face in their industry, and even the way they prefer to be contacted.

This is how we develop our owned stories. We know who we’re talking to because we’ve learnt our stakeholder’s journey.

How to make the media own your owned content

Now I would like focus on four methods for effectively placing owned media:

• Attract: Using digital marketing tools and our own blog and social media content, we optimise SEO so we can be ‘found’ during the media’s research process. We need to use Google to our advantage to heighten this effect.
• Convert: This is when long-tail content is brought into play. We’ve now attracted our media and we need to retain them. We include targeted content that applies to the individual we’re dealing with, avoid blanket greetings, and share relevant information. This allows us to generate a loyal network of media contacts who recall our communication with ease.
• Close: This process is easier now that we’ve learnt more about our media. By this stage, we’ve understood whether they’re interested in what we have to offer and we can tailor our approach, using their preferred method of communication to turn them into publishers. We must proceed with caution because, as always, it’s about being at the right place at the right time and sharing the right content. We don’t want to lose them now that we’re so close to crossing the finish line.
• Delight: Build on the last three methods and retain your loyal publishers – it’s time to offer incentives to the individual while also maintaining the learning curve. In work, much as in real life, you can never truly know somebody. It’s at this stage where you utilise all the tools at your disposal to learn what they talk about, what their online personalities are like, and, most importantly, what more we can do to make their work life easier.

Much like the economic principal of ‘Push and Pull’, our industry rotates on the same axis. We need to push our clients to be more authentic and push for acceptance of out-of-the-box ideas, while pulling in our media contacts to transform them into repeat publishers.

Riya Vatnani is Senior Account Executive at Cicero & Bernay Public Relations. An independent PR agency headquartered in Dubai and offering new-age public relations consultancy to the UAE and across the MENA. |www.cbpr.me