It's All About the Owned
Something has been bothering me and in order for me to move past the nagging, burning feeling in my chest, I need to write.
Let's start by going over what we have learned.
There are those who have consistently encouraged us to create good content. The Gary Vaynerchuks of the world have taught us to experiment with and exploit all of the free tools that are available. And I happen to agree with them.
The thing that I vehemently disagree with though, is painstakingly creating content that promotes your ideas, drives your business or engages with your audience and then putting it in a space that you do not have control over*.
Blogging sites like Tumblr, Posterous, Blogger, Typepad and even Wordpress.com are excellent resources for people who want to get started, but if you really, truly CARE, you owe it to yourself to take control. In other words, you need to own your content.
What do I mean by that? At allen & gerritsen, we embrace a paid, owned and earned media methodology.
- Paid: leveraging the power of a channel to broadcast your message one way and either drive to a specific call to action or promote brand awareness.
- Earned: The customer as a channel. You can participate here, but you do not manage the conversation, nor do you own the platforms or the content that you put into these spaces.
- Owned: Your web site as a dynamic, repeatable and measurable experience.
Why do I need to own my content? There are several reasons.
Certainty
When you create a platform, you have control over the platform.
Sites like Tumblr and Posterous and even Twitter are backed by venture capital and without revenue, that eventually runs out no matter how amazing the platform is.
They also have the ability to change terms of service, APIs and general functionality without asking. Look at what the free community platform Ning did when they switched from a free service to a pay model. Sure, it was tiered and it was a smart model, but they essentially pissed off everyone by not thinking about their revenue stream up front. They had to lay off 40% of their staff and put the model into place just to keep them afloat.
Continued on the next page
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