Media types

Shared media

social circulation · shared channels

Definition

Shared media is the PESO name for circulation that happens when other people pass, quote, review, or argue with a message on networks neither the brand nor a newsroom fully controls. Comments, quote-posts, unpaid creator mentions, community threads, and review-site conversations sit here when no one was paid to publish them and the brand cannot edit the copy after it lands.

Dietrich split shared out of earned because “it ran on Twitter” is not the same event as “a reporter wrote it.” The company social account is owned. The replies under the post are shared. A journalist’s article is earned. A thousand people linking that article in Slack and Discord is shared again. Teams that skip the letter report social as either vanity owned reach or fake journalism.

How it works

Watch what happens after a message leaves the building. Count distinct accounts, not raw impressions, when you can. Separate employees (close to owned) from customers and peers (shared) from contracted creators (paid). Save URLs. Social platforms drop reach and delete posts; a screenshot without a URL is a weak clip.

Example: a regional bank posts a 45-second explainer on overdraft changes to its owned LinkedIn page. Eighty employees reshare it. A local consumer reporter quotes one line in a story. Two Reddit threads argue the fee math, one of them linking the reporter. Report four rows: owned post, employee circulation (shared, affiliated), news story (earned), Reddit threads (shared, unaffiliated). If the bank then puts $2,500 behind the original post, the extra impressions are paid. The Reddit threads are still shared.

Shared media is a poor primary SEO tactic. Most platforms nofollow or wrap outbound links. It can still feed brand searches, reporter tips, and the unlinked mentions that digital PR later tries to convert.

How it differs

Earned media, in the narrow sense, is an independent publisher’s work product. Shared media is distribution and conversation. User-generated content is a format that often lives in the shared bucket when it is unpaid. A review copied onto the product page becomes owned the moment the brand republishes it; the original review stays shared or earned depending on the site. Paid social is not shared. The “share” button did not earn the reach. The media buyer did.

Common errors

Reporting employee #IWorkHere posts as independent earned media. Treating a Discord pile-on as a crisis clip without capturing quotes and dates. Assuming a viral share will create indexable backlinks. Buying comments. Calling a community “owned” because a staffer is a moderator.

Sources