A lot of social marketers only pay attention to paid and owned social marketing. But earned social is too important to ignore! Find out why, as well as 5 ways to generate more of it!

1. 5 Ways to Generate More Earned Social

2. Earned Social:
people sharing content/products with
friends — not only to Facebook, but
mobile, chat, email, everywhere else
What is Earned Social?
Paid Social:
Social advertisements (e.g.
promoted posts)
Owned Social:
Content from a brand’s
social pages
Earned Social = Digital Word of Mouth

3. It’s the hardest to control
 Fans can say whatever they want
It’s the hardest to measure
 native social analytics (e.g. Facebook Insights)
only track owned and paid efforts, and very few third
party analytics track earned social well
Why Don’t I Hear More About
Earned Social?

4. 92% of consumers say friend
recommendations are the most trusted source
of recommendations...
…And earned social is digital friend
recommendations
So is earned social something social marketers
can afford to ignore?
But…

5. NO!

6. So here are 5 ways social marketers can
impact earned social

7. 1. Contests
User-generated content (UGC) contests are extremely powerful
ways to encourage sharing. The prizes don’t even have to be
extravagant! Often, just the chance to be shared to a wide
audience will do the trick.
For example, The Tonight
Show with Jimmy Fallon
does a great job with their
hashtag game. They get free
publicity, it always gets huge
public participation, and the
only reward is having your
(usually embarrassing) tweet
read on national television!

8. 1. Contests
With a slight twist to the social UGC contest, Oreo asked their fans to
submit pictures of items they wanted to be made out of creme or cookie
-- in effect, picking sides of the hot debate over which part of the Oreo
cookie is better. By using the hashtags #cremethis or #cookiethis, fans
made their pictures eligible to be chosen.

9. 2. Referrals
Referral programs have been around forever, but they are especially
powerful with the rise of social media. With social media, people can be
super efficient (or lazy) and just post a referral message to their entire
social network at once.
Groupon built a business out of social referrals, and Uber and Lyft have
recently done a great job earning social media with social referrals.

10. 3. Surprise and Delight
Small, unexpected things
give customers a great
experience and a reason to
share.
Coca Cola does an excellent job
of this and it gets them a ton of
earned social. Just one of many
fun vending machine stunts, this
vending machine gave away free
Cokes when people gave it a hug.

11. 4. Reward
Reward your social customers. This
could be determined by existing
measures like Klout scores or Yelp elite
status. Social marketers can also
reward those who converted from
social media or have shown to
influence others on social by sharing.
Since they’ve already proven to be
active on social media, it’s more likely
that they’ll share again.
Sprout Social, a social analytics
company, sends their top customers
little thank-you packages. Their
customers love it and return the favor
by sharing on social.

12. 5. Remind
Finally, put it directly on your customers’ minds and go ahead and tell
them to share! Some fans just need to be prompted. Whether that’s
with large social icons on your website, on an order confirmation email,
or on a card that’s delivered with the package, there are tons of
opportunities to remind your customers to share.
At the end of each Last
Week Tonight episode, John
Oliver asks his audience to
spread a hashtag relating to
his main piece.

13. 5. Remind
Warby Parker also does a great job of reminding their customers
to share on social throughout the buying process. When
customers do the home try-on, step 2 of their instructions is to
post pictures to social for feedback.

14. As you can see, a lot can be done to impact your
earned social, as well as encourage more of it. At the
most basic level, give your customers something worth
sharing and then ask them to share it!
What are you doing to impact your earned social?
Check out the full blog post here:
5 Ways to Generate More Earned Social

15. About Inside Social
Inside Social is a social marketing platform that helps companies measure and
increase their social ROI by focusing on the metrics that matter, not the vanity
metrics you’re used to on social.
We built a share tracking technology that connects social sharing to
downstream conversions, such as a download, subscription, or purchase. By
measuring, attributing, and optimizing social based on conversions, we help
companies do better social marketing.
We are based in Seattle, WA.
Connect with us on our social channels: