LOOKING FOR EARNED MEDIA?

Thanks for reaching out to us. It sounds like you want us to experience your business in return for us sharing it with our online community?

We're passionate ambassadors for the city of Raleigh with a high level of trust and authority, and love to help local businesses and share cool content with our community.

We'll do the best we can to support you, but we do get multiple requests daily so have to be concious of where we put our time! This page outlines what we can and can't do.

As a small business ourselves, our time is valuable, and our bottom line is important. Using our resources to promote businesses for free, without compensation, is not a smart business model. If our business is not sustainable, then we can't help anyone in Raleigh!

We're constantly sharing businesses and brands via Instagram, our blog, and email newsletter. Many businesses we've experienced in Raleigh are featured in numerous articles on our site (earned media) because we've found them to be stellar!

If you would like to work with us, but don't have budget, we do have creative ways we can still help. HOWEVER, please allow us to be upfront!

There has to be a WIN for us to justify our valuable time it takes to experience your business, then the time to create the content, and the time it takes to promote the content to our audiences!

As much as we love a delicious meal and good cocktail, we typically can't justify getting that for free in exchange for 3-5 hours of our time and work - that's not even including the number of resources (time + money+ skills) we've invested just to reach our level of influence.

If you do the math, we're giving away hundreds of dollars of marketing value in exchange for a $60 meal, or a $10 glass of wine.

On top of that, we have to factor in fuel costs and tipping your staff - so we actually lose money promoting your business!

Therefore, we prioritize content creation to those who have a marketing budget. We understand some businesses have limited budgets and still want us to help in some capacity - there are ways we can do that, so keep reading. But first, let's just clarify, so we're all on the right page...

EARNED MEDIA

Earned media, or earned content, is any material created about you or your business that you haven't paid for yourself.

With earned media you are hoping to get the free publicity. Usually this means we experience your business and have full discretion over how we share it and what we share.

Earned media is NOT:

  • requesting specific services and deliverables (e.g., Instagram reels and stories)
  • demanding a time frame of publication
  • controlling the messaging
  • using our content / images for your own marketing materials

That is paid advertising! And we have options for those required deliverables. 

If your business aligns with our content plans, and we can find ways to leverage it in other ways for making money, then we typically can find ways to work in with you if you have no budget. 

We've worked successfully for 13 years now with some of the biggest brands in the world - both paid and earned media - our guiding principle has always been to create WIN-WIN-WIN relationships. 

We have a stellar reputation and will not agree to work with you - purely hosted or more - if we don't believe we can provide you value! In other words, we're not going to eat the meal and run, never to share a word about your restaurant. 

We know it's a cost and a risk to you, and we're here to support you in the best ways we can! 

It has to be a FAIR VALUE EXCHANGE or it's a no from us. 

CREATIVE WAYS TO MAKE IT WORK

Here are some of the examples of how we can leverage earned media into a win for us:

  • If your business fits into our specific content plans e.g., Best brunches in Raleigh, or neighborhood guides and we can earn income in other ways.
  • Our best ROI is blog content and so our most powerful leverage.
  • If we have top line sponsors. e.g. we featured multiple North Hills businesses through the campaign we did with Kane Realty as the top line sponsor.
  • If aligning with you can help grow our own accounts.
  • If attending an event gives us valuable exposure, leverage, or connections.
  • If the value of what you're offering surpasses our costs and prices.
  • If you can give us backstage passes to a Taylor Swift concert - somethings you just can't say no to 😉
  • If there is a huge win for our community!

Remember, we are business owners and entrepreneurs. We have to justify our resources spent in terms of our ROI.

IMPORTANT

  • If we're creating content to promote your business, without payment, we expect all costs to be covered, including tip. You can give us a gift card so we can cover it that way, otherwise we'll charge an administration fee to ensure our costs are covered.
  • We also expect for you to share our content and link to it on your websites.
  • You can reshare our content on our channels, but you can NEVER take our words, images, video content to create new content that markets your business. This is copyright infringement. You will need to purchase a license in order to do this. We do have AI tools and lawyers who monitor this. 
  • NOTE: Many businesses will send us an Instagram DM and say, "come try our restaurant on me". We never follow through on that. It's awkward when we arrive and the person who sent the DM cannot be found, and whoever is on the front door thinks we're scammers. It's best you follow the next steps below or something like, "I have a gift card under your name for X amount of dollars." 
  • We receive multiple requests daily. We don't have the capacity to attend them all, and prioritize paid marketing partnerships. As we love to create unique content with our global perspective, we feel very limited in our capacity to do that when we attend a media event. We'd prefer to experience the full depth of what you offer and create unique and rich content. We can help to promote your business long after the media event has finished and the inital promotion is long over and forgotten.  

NEXT STEPS

We want to hear from you as to what you'd like us to experience, how you envision that working taking into account the above, what your ideal vision or scenario is, and any other pertinent details about your business and offerings.

We keep a list on file of local businesses seeking an earned media partnership (i.e. no budget for paid advertising) that we can reach out to when opportunities arise that suit our content goals or if we have topline sponsors.

For example, creating content on best fall drinks in Raleigh. These are great opportunities to be featured. We need the best contact to reach out to and they must know who we are and be aware of how we work.

Please let us know how much lead time you also need to arrange something with us. We will keep all details on file and will reach out if we find an approriate fit for you.

Fill out the form below:

 

OUR Numbers

Monthly Blog Readers

Content ranks high on Google, is indexed for life offering the reader the chance to learn more about you AND giving your site valuable link juice.

Demographics

  1. Raleigh
  2. Atlanta
  3. Charlotte
  4. Cary
  5. Durham

Instagram

Our Reels receive an average of 8K-50K views. In the last 30 days, our account has reached 566K accounts, and 49.4K accounts engaged with our content.

Demographics

  1. Raleigh
  2. Cary
  3. Durham
  4. Wake Forest
  5. Apex

Email subscribers

 We send at least two emails a week to our community. They have an average open rate of 43% and click through rate of 3%

Age Demographics: 1. Ages 25-34    2. Ages 35 - 44   3. Ages 45 - 54

WHAT OUR CLIENTS WILL TELL YOU ABOUT WORKING WITH US

We have 13 years' experience working as content creators via our successful international travel blog. We have partnered with brands such as American Express, Allianz Travel Insurance, Canon, Lonely Planet, Qantas, Microsoft, Ford, Nissan, and scores of tourism destinations across the world. Here's what is commonly said about working with us.

  • We're professional, enthusiastic, communicative, friendly, and easy to work with.
  • We create authentic and compelling stories that engage our audience and have a high level of trust, due to our expertise and passion.
  • We offer practical and personal insights while positioning your business, brand, or destination with a unique and reflective global perspective.
  • Because of our strong SEO knowledge, our content continues to rank high in Google, offering our clients long-term return on investment when most influencer partnerships have stopped producing.

Bottom line: In a world where the word influencer partnerships have stopped delivering results, we are known for creating authentic stories that deliver consistent and long-term ROI finite results and exposure.

Previous Clients

A woman posing for the camera

Hannah Smith

Hannah Smith - Marketing Manager, Kane Realty Corporation, North Hills

"We were very pleased with our marketing campaign with This is Raleigh. Craig is great to work with – creative, a good communicator and always professional. Their content is top notch across the board and we were very happy with the engagement and impressions we received on social media thanks to their creativity and thoughtfulness in putting together an impressive and well-rounded 48 Hour Guide to North Hills. We look forward to working with their team again in the future!" 

Scroll to Top