5 Ways to Generate More Earned Social

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

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?

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…

NO!

So here are 5 ways social marketers can

impact earned social

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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: