To understand earned media, you need to understand the other types of media: Owned and paid.
Owned Media
As you may have gathered from its name, owned media refers to the content that your company owns and retails control of. This includes all pages on your site and blog, as well as the content on your social media channels.
Paid Media
Paid media includes anything you pay to reach customers with, like advertisements or sponsored content on news sites and blogs. Essentially, any time there is a monetary transaction before you reach customers, you’re working with paid media.
Earned Media
Earned media, then, refers to content that relates to your business but isn’t published on properties you own, and you also didn’t pay for. In some cases, this occurs naturally, but in others, it’s the product of outreach and promotion.