Earned Media Value for Instagram: Dash Hudson’s Latest Tool
[Originally published on the Dash Hudson blog.]
Earned media: what is it, why should you care, and what is it worth? All great questions, all being answered below.
Dash Hudson is at it again, upgrading its portfolio of sophisticated Instagram performance analysis tools. Now there’s a mouthful. Seriously though, our sprites are constantly working to upgrade what we’ve got and innovating on the new-new for even more value.
We recently launched the effectiveness rate as an alternative way to understand your content’s performance. Today, we’re adding another layer to the cake and introducing EMV — earned media value — a functionality that will actually let you concretely measure the ROI of your user-generated content and influencer relationships. Say what?!
But first, let’s define what earned media is to be able to truly grasp its value.
What is Earned Media and Why Should I care?
We live in a time where businesses are connecting with their consumers through millions of visual touchpoints every single day. That means that photos and videos are the most important form of communication brands have with their fans.
Those that understand how to use visuals to create bonds are ahead of the pack, and likely have a healthy bastion of earned media. That is every piece of content that is created around their brand but do not own and did not produce. It comes in the form of:
A company with an abundance of earned media is one that is thriving on Instagram because it’s an influence barometer — either people love it enough to be creating content about it or they’re paying cool people to spread the good word. It also helps accounts score a ton of organic exposure, and in the world of social, those things are worth their weight in gold.
But just how much gold, you ask? The eternal question. Since the dawn of social media marketing, CMOs have been asking for a number on their influencer returns. Problem is, it’s all been very intangible other than measuring important KPIs.
Until now.
What Is Earned Media Worth?
In terms of intangible value, earned media is priceless. But let’s be real, marketers want cold hard numbers and figures about the return on their dollar spend. We heard you loud and clear and we went to work on figuring out the most accurate way to measure this elusive investment.
The first thing we had to contend with is that not all influential Instagrammers are created equal, therefore their value will also differ. Each one of your relationships is worth something different if you’re putting a price on them.
The way we’re able to put a dollar estimate on these posts is through — wait for it — a really complex algorithm. It was built specifically for Instagram metrics like estimated reach, growth rate, and engagement to ensure that every single piece of content earned by your brand is attributed a unique value.
That was the long version. Here’s the short one: the worth of earned media value depends on the person who posts.
Why Is This Relevant?
That might have been a rhetorical question. We know you want to understand which influencer partnerships are most worthwhile to your company. This way you can focus on fostering the relationships that are beneficial to your brand (the intangible) and to your bottom line (the concrete).
Use it to decide who to work with, whether a power Instagrammer or a micro influencer, and to track the worth of those relationships over a period of time. Because every post is measured differently based on the factors mentioned above, it levels out the playing field for influencers of all audience sizes.
Apples to apples, baby.
Here at Dash Hudson, we want our family members to reach the highest possible level of performance across all their visual social channels. Measuring the ROI of your influencer relationships is vital, and that goes for whether your brand is a huge conglomerate or a tiny burgeoning startup.
The DH EMV tool for calculating earned media value is finally bringing a tangible measurement to the worth of influencer partnerships. That’s powerful.
Already a DH fam member? Get in touch with our superstar customer success team and they’ll get you sorted. If not, get a demo.
