How to Build and Run an Owned Media Site on a Small Budget

11 13, 2017

"Owned media", media that a company manages and operates itself, is regarded as an important initiative in web marketing and corporate branding.

Building and operating everything in-house may sound like it would cost a great deal, but that is not the case.
Here we introduce how to start an owned media site on a small budget, covering everything from planning to operational practices such as measuring results.

Benefits of Owned Media

Acquiring Prospective Customers

You can define your own target audience and appeal directly to prospective customers. If you get the messaging right, it leads to user acquisition and lead generation.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

You can create content that a corporate site or LP (landing page) cannot cover, and use it for SEO. Note that Google's approach to evaluating sites places emphasis on site content, and Google has stated that high-quality sites with original, useful content will rank higher.
Reference: Google Official Blog: Toward improving the quality of Japanese search

You Stay in Control

You can control your content and site strategy yourself. You can create content that appeals in ways paid media (advertising channels) and earned media (social channels) cannot fully convey, and you can run the site's PDCA cycle in-house.

Cost Performance

Depending on how you operate it, you may be able to run it on a smaller budget than advertising spend on paid media (advertising channels). Because the operational strategy is also handled in-house, the budget is easier to control.

Planning an Owned Media Site

Decide on KPIs

As with any plan, you need to clarify the purpose of the project and its goals.
Set KPIs (key performance indicators) as evaluation metrics for that purpose, and measure results against them.

Examples:

Purpose	KPI
Conversions, sales	Number of conversions, revenue, number of inquiries, etc.
Prospective customers, greater awareness	PV, UU, number of shares, etc.
User acquisition	Number of followers, number of subscribers, etc.
SEO	Search rankings, search traffic volume, etc.

Decide on Your Target Audience

Define the target audience: what kind of users do you want to reach? Approaches include creating personas (customer profiles), understanding your user base from the access analytics of an existing site, or conversely aiming at segments you have not yet been able to reach.

There is no need to narrow the target too far. The strength of owned media is that you can respond flexibly in-house while measuring results.

Decide on Your Content

For content, which matters most, you need to decide who will create it, how, and how often.
Some organizations create all content in-house, while others commission external writers.

Examples:

Target	Article theme	Primary keywords	Writer	Publishing frequency
Target A	Theme A	Keywords A, B, C	External writer	2-3 articles per week
Target B	Theme B	Keywords D, E, F	In-house staff	1 article per week

Producing and Building an Owned Media Site

Decide on a System

Because an owned media site is updated frequently, using a CMS (content management system) is recommended.
CMS options include WordPress and Movable Type. WordPress is popular because it can be used for free, and it is said that "a quarter of all sites worldwide are built with WordPress".

Reference: A quarter of all sites worldwide are built with WordPress
Official WordPress site

Decide on a Design

Site design production and coding may sound like they cost a great deal, but with WordPress you can easily build a site suited to your purpose using the theme feature.

LIQUID PRESS "WordPress theme for building owned media sites" is a theme designed specifically for owned media. The design is easy to customize, and it has a track record of being adopted by many owned media sites. By using a theme like this, you can easily build a high-quality owned media site.

WordPress theme for building owned media sites
Reference: LIQUID PRESS case studies

Measuring the Results of Owned Media

Access Analytics

This is a basic part of running a site, but you should perform access analysis with tools such as Google Analytics. You can check site performance including PV, UU, traffic sources, and conversion rates by traffic source. Use access analytics to measure the results of the site as a whole and keep the PDCA cycle turning.

Content Analysis

The WordPress theme for building owned media sites has a built-in Content Analysis Beta feature. No complex configuration like Google Analytics is required, and you can easily check figures such as impressions and share counts for each article. It also displays the body text character count and keyword occurrence counts as a reference for SEO, making it an analysis feature purpose-built for owned media.

Owned media Content Analysis Beta feature

Visualize Your Results

There is also a WordPress plugin that visualizes page views as a treemap.
With this plugin, page views are visualized clearly as an infographic, so you can check performance even more intuitively. It is easy to use even without specialist knowledge.

WordPress plugin that visualizes page views as a treemap

Summary

By using the WordPress theme for building owned media sites, you can start an owned media site on a small budget. Furthermore, by measuring results with access analytics and content analysis, you can expect to run an accurate PDCA cycle that leads to your goals.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions about building owned media or web marketing.