In the ever-growing crypto landscape, projects of different types are always competing for the public’s attention and patronage. This means there are a million and one tactics that you can employ, from SEO to hosting events. But in all of this, it’s important that you never neglect the role of crypto earned media.
Crypto earned media is one of the most effective ways to not only gain attention but also credibility over time. In this article, we will explain what exactly it is, how to go about getting it, and how it can transform your crypto business and earn the audience it seeks.
What Is Earned Media in Crypto?
Before you go about pursuing crypto earned media, you’ll need to know what exactly it is. In its simplest form, crypto earned media refers to coverage on platforms and channels that are not your own. If you publish your press release on your own website, that is not crypto earned media. But if it is published on an external news website, someone else’s social media, and so on, it is.
Generally speaking, crypto earned media sits in juxtaposition to not only owned media, i.e., your own channels, but to paid media as well. Paid media refers to things like search results ads, pop-up ads, social media feed ads, and so on. Paid media essentially is the most blatant form of advertising online, and while it continues to be popular, it is fast losing steam to crypto earned media.
Earned vs Owned vs Paid Media in Web3
As a business in the crypto space, you will likely find yourself having to decide between crypto earned media, owned media, and paid media. Most likely, you’ll have to divide your money, time and resources between the three, focusing most heavily on one or two. Before you make that decision, it’s important to understand the benefits of each. In this section, we will consider all three against certain criteria.
1. Builds Trust in a Skeptical Market
In terms of building trust in a market as skeptical as crypto, earned media comes out on top. When you publish any sort of information about a project on a channel you own, you don’t gain that much credibility with the audience. As far as they’re concerned, anyone can say on their own blog that they are offering a quality product or service. Because crypto consumers have seen several rug pulls in their time, they are even more skeptical of owned media.
Paid media creates a little bit more trust than owned because there is still a review process. Certain dodgy products will struggle to secure paid media on certain crypto sites, no matter how much money they have to work with. If a consumer sees your business ad on Yahoo Business or Reuters, they are likely to trust it.
But all this pales in comparison to the trust you secure when you have crypto earned media. Crypto earned media translates to most consumers as a higher stamp of approval because a journalist would have had to organically mention you in an article, or your press release must have gone through a review process.
2. Drives Organic Visibility
If you’re looking for organic visibility, your best bets are either crypto earned media or paid media. When you engage in crypto-owned media, you’re essentially already publishing on your own platforms. It’s not impossible that more people will come across it, especially if you apply the principles of search engine optimization, but this will be less than the others.
Crypto paid media, depending on the platform you choose to advertise on, will see thousands, if not millions, of eyeballs on your business. But at the same time, more and more consumers are opting for ad blockers or paying subscription services to avoid seeing ads. So, not everyone you are targeting with your ad. Many consumers these days also find ads intrusive and annoying. But with crypto earned media, there is a sense that it is not a traditional ad in the same way. Instead, consumers are likely to see it as more neutral and thus are more likely to engage with it.
3. Attracts Investors and Partnerships
For crypto businesses looking for investment and partnership, crypto earned media is a gold mine. Crypto owned media can be very beneficial for this if your channels are well-curated and designed to bring in organic traffic. Crypto paid media can also create visibility, but this is based on the assumption that those you want to partner with will somehow come across the ad among the thousands of other businesses competing for the same ad space.
Crypto earned media is not just about visibility but also about credibility. If your project gets an organic mention on a top platform, it is seen as the cream of the crop. Putting yourself in an investor’s position, you are more likely to engage with a business that has been mentioned by the likes of Bloomberg and The Block than with others. So, those looking to attract partners should keep this in mind.
How Crypto Earned Media Actually Happens
Since crypto earned media has established itself as perhaps the best way to go about gaining attention for your business, your next step is to understand how exactly to earn this media coverage. Typically, it can be done in the following ways:
Step 1: Newsworthy Announcements
One of the first things you want to do is put out announcements that are appealing to a general audience and will give you coverage from media platforms. Think of it this way, the various media platforms want to report on the most newsworthy developments so that they get clicks. By providing them with this, you basically guarantee yourself coverage, and this will help your business. If you put out an especially innovative project, have a notable person on your team, and so on, you almost certainly see crypto platforms giving you coverage which helps your goals.
Step 2: Press Release Distribution
Another way to get crypto earned media is to put out interesting press releases. By having press releases published on these different sites, you automatically gain access to their audience. You also put yourself in the line of sight of their various journalists who can see your developments first-hand. If your company launches an innovative crypto mining device, for example, having the press release carried on a top website means more people will know about it, and even more crypto earned media can be achieved. Luckily, distributing crypto press releases is easier now than it has ever been.
Step 3: Media Pickup
Once you have put out your newsworthy announcement and gotten some distribution via press releases, you’ll likely see more media pickup. This could be your business being quoted directly in articles, interview requests for your executives, and so on. You should always make sure to lean into this by offering quotes if you are asked for them, reaching out to journalists to offer your insights, and so on. By making sure you monitor and engage with this media coverage, you maximize your benefits.
Strategies to Generate Crypto Earned Media
While we’ve outlined the basic steps to securing crypto earned media, the following strategies will also bolster your efforts and increase your chances of success.
1. Launch With a Strong Narrative
There are tens of thousands of crypto tokens in the market at any given time, and hundreds of projects are being launched every year. To secure this sort of media coverage, you have to give the market a reason to care about you. Don’t just position yourself as any other meme coin or any other exchange or any other wallet maker. Instead, emphasize what makes you different from everything in the market. This will make you appeal to these crypto media platforms and, thus, their readers.
2. Use Targeted Crypto PR Distribution
As we’ve said, getting your press releases published on a variety of high-ranking and high-authority sites will benefit your efforts. To succeed at this, we would recommend using targeted crypto PR distribution services. What we offer here at BTCWire, for example, offers guaranteed access to dozens of these sites, meaning there is a higher chance of crypto earned media as well as general visibility.
3. Build Relationships With Crypto Journalists
Another great way to earn crypto media coverage over time is to develop a relationship with the journalists that cover these sorts of stories. As we’ve said in a previous article, you can’t invite them to your events, offer quotes for their upcoming pieces, give them exclusive access, and much more. While it might be a slow and steady affair, it will benefit you in the long run.
4. Leverage Community Amplification
The best crypto projects succeed because of the community behind them, and you should never hesitate to leverage this for your own benefit. Even before your project hits the ground, you want to begin developing a community of loyal customers who will evangelize your project. From loyalty programs to social media amplification, these can get you the attention of the crypto media platforms you are targeting and thus, get you this coverage.
Measuring Crypto Earned Media Success
As you pursue crypto earned media, you want to know how effective your efforts have been thus far. Thankfully, there are several ways you can gauge the effectiveness of your crypto earned media thus far, some of which are as follows:
1. Media Coverage
Of course, the most obvious way to gauge its effectiveness is to find out how much media coverage you are actually getting. Month to month, you want the number of third-party platforms that mention or link to your business to increase. From the back end of your website, you can track links from other parts of the internet and see if this has increased or decreased. You’ll also want to track that these mentions are positive and frame your business in a good light.
2. Backlinks
As we’ve noted, backlinks are an important way to see if crypto earned media is working or not. It should not just be traditional crypto media platforms linking to yours, but also traditional news sites, social media pages, and much more. These backlinks benefit you from an SEO perspective as it means your business will rank higher and will become even more visible.
3. Referral Traffic
Looking at your website’s backend, you can track how much referral traffic you’ve been getting over the period you’ve pursued crypto earned media, and ideally, it should increase, especially at the beginning. Referral traffic signals more prominence of your business within the crypto space and is definitely a sign of progress.
4. Brand Mentions
Perhaps the ultimate sign of crypto earned media doing its job is that your business begins to get more brand mentions across the board. Besides people linking to your website and social media pages, your brand name should organically come up in more conversations in your niche. If you are a meme coin, for example, you’ll find your token being mentioned alongside heavy hitters like Dogecoin and BONK, and this means that your market share is increasing.
Conclusion
In the ever-changing crypto landscape, crypto earned media has positioned itself as perhaps the best way to earn not just visibility but a connection with a paying audience. Gaining access to the source of sites that would offer crypto earned media means that you’re instantly taken more seriously, secure more traffic, and can stand out above the rest. As we’ve said, one of the best ways to do this is through crypto press release distribution, which we specialize in here at BTCWire. Consider some of our packages and reach out to us for any inquiries.