Owned, Earned, Shared, Paid

Four kinds of media, what each costs, how much control you get, and where all 179 tactics actually live.

Picture one Saturday night at a dancehall and count the ways the room gets talked about. The owner paid $40 to boost a post on Thursday. The calendar page on the website lists the night, the band, and the start time. A guest in the back filmed thirty seconds of the floor and sent it to three friends. A reporter at the weekly paper wrote two paragraphs about the fiddle player. Four completely different kinds of publicity, all working on one night, and each one costs something different, behaves differently, and can be trusted by a stranger to a different degree. On Sunday morning, the owner can see exactly what the boosted post cost and roughly how many people it reached. She can’t see the group chat at all, and she may never learn which of the four actually brought the couple who are now dancing every week.

People who do this for a living sort those channels into four buckets: owned, earned, shared, and paid. The sorting looks like jargon, but it answers three practical questions. How much does this cost me, in dollars and in hours? How much control do I have over what it says and who sees it? And how much will a stranger believe it? A room that can answer those three questions about each channel can spend its limited time and money on purpose. A room that can’t tends to spend on whatever is easiest, which is usually whatever is paid. It also exposes a habit most rooms don’t notice: the channel that’s easiest to start is rarely the one that does the most work.

This chapter walks the four kinds in turn, then does something the first five volumes never did: it sorts all 179 tactics into the kind of media each one lives in. The result is lopsided in a way that says something about this business. We’ll get to the count at the end. First, the vocabulary. The model comes from Gini Dietrich, who calls it PESO, for paid, earned, shared, and owned media. We’ll use her four words, put in the order that suits a honky tonk, since the thing you own comes first. None of the four is good or bad on its own. Each has a job, and the trouble comes from asking one to do another’s.

PR TACTIC: The Media Mix Check

What it is: List the last ten things you did to get the word out, then mark each one owned, earned, shared, or paid, with the dollars and hours it took.

Why it works: Most rooms drift toward whichever channel is easiest, and the lopsidedness stays invisible until it is written down.

Try this: Draw four columns on one sheet of paper and sort last month’s publicity into them before you plan next month’s.

2.1 Owned: Everything You Control

Owned media is whatever you control end to end. In Dietrich’s model that means content on your own website or blog, and for most businesses that’s the whole definition. A honky tonk owns a good deal more. It owns the building, the door, the stage, the floor, the staff’s greeting, the printed menu, the calendar on the wall, the email list, and the text club. All of it says something about the room, and none of it requires anyone’s permission to change. That’s why this book counts the room itself as owned media, and why 138 of the 179 tactics in the earlier volumes turn out to live there. A honky tonk’s richest publicity asset is the one it can walk across. When you start listing your owned media, include the things that don’t feel like media. The sign by the road, the way the phone is answered, the voicemail greeting, the receipt, the bathroom, and the first thing a guest sees when they step inside all say something about the room, and you can change every one of them this week.

The trade-offs are easy to state. Owned media costs little or nothing in dollars and a lot in time, because every piece of it has to be built and kept up by somebody. You have complete control over what it says. It builds slowly, since a website nobody has linked to and a list with forty names don’t move anyone. And a stranger discounts it, because it is you talking about you. A flyer that says “the best floor in Texas” persuades almost nobody. The same promise delivered in person by a bartender who remembers a name persuades plenty. Owned media has its highest credibility inside the room, where the guest is checking your claims against what they can see and hear. That gap between screen and room is useful. It means your owned channels online should do a modest job, which is to be accurate, findable, and clear about what to expect, and leave the persuading to the night itself and to the people who were there.

Its real power is that it can’t be taken away. Rented channels change their rules, and a room that has built a list it can reach directly doesn’t have to wonder whether tonight’s post will be shown to anyone. Volume One made that case with its two venues, one with a big following and one with a quiet list, and the point holds up: what you own keeps working after the platform changes its mind. Chapter 13 covers the discipline in full, including how to be found by the people who are already looking for you. A practical test for your owned media: if every social platform disappeared tomorrow, how would your regulars find out about next Friday? If the honest answer is “they wouldn’t,” building something you own is the first priority, ahead of any new post.

2.2 Earned: What Others Give You

Earned media is attention you get without paying for it, because somebody decided you were worth mentioning. A newspaper story, a radio host’s shout-out, a playlist add, a review, a blog roundup, an act’s recommendation to another act, a booker passing your name to a friend. In every case a third party made the choice, and that’s exactly where its value comes from. A stranger knows the paper didn’t take your money to run that story. When the same message arrives in your own words, they hold it at arm’s length. When it arrives in someone else’s, they let it in. Earned media also includes recognition inside your own trade, which outsiders never see. A booker telling another booker you’re easy to work with, a sound engineer telling a band your room sounds good, a teacher telling another teacher your floor is friendly to beginners: each is earned, each is credible, and each depends entirely on how you behaved when nobody was writing anything down.

The cost profile is the opposite of paid. Earned media costs almost nothing in dollars and a great deal in time and relationship-building, and you don’t control it. You can pitch a story, but the reporter writes it, and you may not love the headline. Results are lumpy: nothing for three months, then three mentions in a week. It also can’t be bought, and the law now treats attempts to buy it seriously. The Federal Trade Commission’s rule on fake reviews, in effect since October 2024, bars purchased reviews and reviews written under false pretenses. The honest way to earn coverage is to be worth covering, which is one more reason the room comes first. Because it’s lumpy, earned media is easy to give up on. The trick is to keep the small, steady work going, such as a short list of reporters and hosts, a note when something genuinely newsworthy happens, and quick, accurate answers when someone calls, and to judge it over a year rather than a month.

Reviews deserve a special note, because they sit at the border between earned and shared. A guest’s review is earned, since you can’t buy it and shouldn’t pressure it. But it’s also the thing a stranger reads most carefully before deciding. Google’s own review policy says businesses shouldn’t offer incentives for reviews, so the honest route is to make the experience review-worthy and make leaving one easy. Chapter 15 covers the full press craft and Chapter 18 covers reviews and reputation. For now, remember the rule that governs the whole category: earned attention can’t be commissioned, only invited. Invitation is a skill. Make the good moments easy to notice, make the facts easy to check, make the people easy to reach, and the third parties who decide what to mention will find you more often.

2.3 Shared: What People Pass Along

Shared media is content that spreads because people choose to pass it on: posts, tags, comments, stories, group chats, and plain word of mouth. In Dietrich’s model the shared category is social media and its purpose is engagement and community. In a honky tonk the most important shared channel is still the oldest one, a person telling another person. A text to a group chat that says “you have to see this floor” is worth more than most posts, and nobody can see it happen. The Volume Five tactics about word-of-mouth casts and ambassadors all live here. So does the whole craft of making short video that people actually send. Shared media is also where your guests do your storytelling for you, for better and for worse. A guest’s clip of a packed floor at the first notes of a favorite song is a better advertisement than anything you could make, and a guest’s clip of a fight in the parking lot is worse than any ad could undo. Both are shared media. Only one is the kind you want.

Shared media sits in the middle of the cost and control scales. It costs little in dollars and plenty in time, because there’s always a next post. You control what you put out but not what comes back, since a clip can be shared with a caption you’d never write. It moves faster than earned and slower than paid, and it’s as credible as the person doing the sharing. A recommendation from someone like me beats one from a brand, which is why shared media is strongest when the people sharing look like the people you want to reach. The psychology behind that, which social-proof researchers have studied for decades, gets a full treatment in Chapter 6. It is also where communities form. A dance group’s chat, a band’s fan page, and a regulars’ thread are shared media that belong to the people in them, not to you. Being welcome in those spaces, without taking them over, is part of the craft.

The catch is that much of what’s shared can’t be seen. Platforms let you count public likes and comments, but private sends, screenshots, group-chat links, and conversations in a truck on the way home leave no trace. Marketers call this dark social, and it explains why so many rooms feel they can’t tell where their guests come from. You can’t measure all of it, and Chapter 24 is honest about that, but you can ask. A simple “how’d you hear about us” at the door catches what no dashboard can. Shared media is the one kind where the best measurement tool is still a conversation. The same applies inside your staff. Ask the bartenders, the door, and the teacher what guests say about how they found you. Their answers are a second tally, and they often catch shared channels the door card misses.

2.4 Paid: What You Buy

Paid media is publicity you buy: an ad, a boosted post, a flyer run at the printer, a sponsorship fee, a banner on the fence, a spot on the radio. It’s the fastest of the four, since it can start running today, and the most controllable, since you choose the words, the picture, the audience, and the budget. It’s also, for a stranger, the least believable, because everyone knows it was bought. Dietrich’s model describes paid media as the part aimed at leads and conversions. That’s the right job for it. It’s good at telling a specific person about a specific thing at a specific time. Paid media also includes things that don’t look like ads: a fee to be listed in a festival program, a donation in exchange for a logo on a T-shirt, a free night given to a social media personality in exchange for posts. If money or something of value changed hands for the mention, treat it as paid, both in your budget and in how you disclose it.

Here is the finding at the center of this chapter: of the 179 tactics in Volumes One through Five, only three live primarily in paid media, and those are the two about sponsors and the one about budget discipline. That isn’t an accident of how the earlier books were written. It reflects how a honky tonk actually fills a floor. The product is the room, and the room persuades better than any ad can. A better use of paid media is as an amplifier. Boost the clip that is already working, put money behind the night that has already proven itself, and print a flyer for a recurring event people already know. Paying to introduce strangers to a room that doesn’t deliver only delivers disappointment faster. The amplifier idea gives you a simple rule for spending. Before you pay to promote anything, ask whether it has already worked without money. A post that already drew comments and sends, or a night that already fills on word of mouth, is a candidate. A post nobody engaged with, or a night that has never worked, is not, and paying for it usually buys a bigger version of the same silence.

Paid media has a quiet cost that doesn’t show on the invoice, which is that it trains you to buy attention you could have earned. A room that boosts every post never learns whether the post was any good. It also carries rules a free post doesn’t. If you pay someone, or give them free drinks, to post about you, the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides say that connection should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Alcohol promotion in Texas has its own limits, which Chapter 17 covers. And the temptation to buy followers, reviews, or likes crosses a legal line the FTC’s 2024 rule now enforces. Spend on paid media after the room has earned it, and measure what it buys before you spend again. The FTC’s own plain-language guidance on endorsements says free products or other perks given with the expectation of a post count as a connection worth disclosing. A simple tag in the caption, said plainly where people will see it, covers most honest cases. When in doubt, disclose, and see Appendix J.

2.5 Where the 179 Tactics Live

Now the count. For each of the 179 tactics, we asked which kind of media it lives in primarily. This is the author’s judgment, and a few tactics straddle two kinds, so treat the numbers as a fair picture, not an audit. Owned comes to 138 tactics, shared to 28, earned to 10, and paid to 3. In plain terms, roughly three of every four tactics the series teaches are about the room and what you control, one in six are about getting people to pass it along, and almost none are about buying attention. Read that as the series’ philosophy in a single line: a room fills when it deserves to, and the work is making the deserving visible. It’s also worth saying what the count doesn’t mean. It doesn’t mean paid media is useless or that earned media is unimportant. It means the earlier books were written for rooms with small budgets and big hearts, and the tactics they teach reflect that. A room with money to spend can use paid media well, as long as it spends behind what already works.

That lopsidedness is a strength and a hazard. The strength is that most of the work is within your reach. You don’t need a budget to fix a welcome or a settlement or a calendar. The hazard is blind spots. A room that is excellent at owned and nearly absent from earned never gets the third-party credibility strangers trust most. A room that lives on shared and neglects owned is building on rented ground. And a room that leans on paid has to keep paying. The four kinds work as a chain, not a menu. Owned builds the thing worth talking about, shared and earned carry it to strangers, and paid, used sparingly, amplifies what is already proven. When you plan, look for the weakest link in that chain. If owned is strong and earned is empty, spend your next month’s effort on two or three honest pitches. If shared is strong and owned is weak, start the list. If paid is doing all the work, stop and ask what the room would look like without it.

So the planning question is never “which channel?” in the abstract. It’s “which channel moves the person I need, from where they are to where I want them?” That question needs the funnel, and the funnel is next. Chapter 3 gives every chair, owner to dance teacher, the same four stages, and from then on each tactic is described by the stage it serves as well as the media it uses. Appendix A lists all 179 with both. If you only act on one thing from this chapter, run the Media Mix Check above. It takes fifteen minutes, and almost everyone who runs it finds one column nearly empty. Then repeat it every quarter. The mix changes as the room changes, and a column that was full last year can empty out without anyone noticing.

THE FOUR KINDS OF MEDIA AT A GLANCE

• Owned. What it is: The room, the website, the list, the calendar, the staff’s welcome. Cost: Low dollars, high hours. Control: High. Speed: Slow to build. Stranger trust: Highest in the room, lowest on a screen. Tactics (of 179): 138.
• Earned. What it is: Press, reviews, playlist adds, recommendations from bookers and acts. Cost: Low dollars, high hours. Control: Low. Speed: Lumpy. Stranger trust: High. Tactics (of 179): 10.
• Shared. What it is: Posts, tags, group chats, word of mouth. Cost: Low dollars, steady hours. Control: Medium. Speed: Medium. Stranger trust: As high as the sharer. Tactics (of 179): 28.
• Paid. What it is: Ads, boosted posts, sponsorship fees, printed flyers. Cost: Dollars. Control: High over the message, low over the response. Speed: Fast. Stranger trust: Lowest. Tactics (of 179): 3.

Counts are the author’s sorting of each tactic’s primary medium; some tactics straddle two kinds.

CASE STUDY

Four Ways to Find New Guests

Neva runs a mid-size honky tonk and wants more first-timers on slow Wednesdays. For one month she tries one action in each kind of media and tracks the cost, counting her own time at a plain $20 an hour. Her bartender, Gus, keeps a “how’d you hear” tally on a napkin at the bar, which gives her a rough count of new guests per action.

Paid. A $120 boosted post, plus an hour to set it up: $120 + (1 hour × $20) = $140. Gus’s tally credits it with 4 new guests. $140 ÷ 4 = $35.00 per new guest.

Earned. She pitches the weekly paper a story about the Wednesday fiddle night. It takes about six hours of writing and phone calls and costs no cash: 6 × $20 = $120. The paper runs two paragraphs and the tally credits 9 new guests. $120 ÷ 9 = $13.33 per new guest.

Owned. She rewrites the calendar page and the door sign, two hours of work: 2 × $20 = $40. The tally credits 6 new guests. $40 ÷ 6 = $6.67 per new guest.

Shared. She asks five regulars to bring a friend and tell the friend why, one hour of conversations: 1 × $20 = $20. The tally credits 11 new guests. $20 ÷ 11 = $1.82 per new guest.

The ranking is tempting to read as a law, but it isn’t one. These are one month’s illustrative numbers, the tally relies on guests remembering and saying how they heard, and the shared channel only worked because the room was already worth bringing a friend to. What the exercise does show is that the cheapest-looking channel in dollars isn’t always the cheapest in hours, and the channel with the most control isn’t the one that moved the most people. Chapter 24 shows how to run the tally honestly, and Chapter 32 turns cost per guest into cost per regular.

REAL TALK

From the booking desk:

I’ve never booked a band because of an ad. I’ve booked bands because another booker told me to, because I watched them play a room I trust, or because a musician I respect said their name unprompted. Every act that ever mattered to my calendar came to me through somebody else’s mouth. So when a band sends me a one-sheet that says “best band in Texas,” I don’t read it as proof. When they send me three names of rooms that rebooked them, I pick up the phone.

HEADS UP

Three rules apply to paid and shared promotion. First, the Federal Trade Commission’s Endorsement Guides say that when someone is paid, given free product, or otherwise rewarded for promoting you, that connection should be disclosed clearly and conspicuously. Second, the FTC’s consumer-review rule, effective October 2024, bans fake reviews and the purchase of fake followers or views to misrepresent influence. Third, alcohol advertising and promotions in Texas are regulated by the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. This is general information, not legal advice. Chapter 17 covers promotions and Appendix J collects the series disclaimers; for specifics, consult a licensed Texas attorney or TABC directly.

MEASURE IT

The number: Cost per new guest by kind of media: dollars plus hours (at a rate you choose) spent on each kind, divided by the new guests each kind brought.

By hand: Over one month, list every publicity action and mark it owned, earned, shared, or paid. Write down dollars spent and hours worked, and put a plain hourly value on the hours. Keep a napkin tally at the door or bar of how new guests say they heard about you. For each kind, add dollars and valued hours, then divide by new guests. Example: $140 ÷ 4 new guests = $35.00 per new guest.

Watch out: Guests misremember, small counts swing wildly, and private word of mouth won’t appear at all. Treat one month as a hint, not a ruling, and keep your hourly value the same every month.

Go deeper: Chapter 24 (attribution without a tech stack), Chapter 29 (partnerships and promotions), and Chapter 32 (the money).

ROLE BOX

• Owner: Your strongest media is owned: the room, the calendar, the list. Check whether anything you do is earned, because that’s usually the empty column.
• Booker: Your reputation is earned inside a small circle of bookers and acts. Your calendar and your messages are the owned media that either confirm or undercut it.
• Musician: Your one-sheet and site are owned, and your fans’ shares are shared. The only earned media that books gigs is another booker or act saying your name.
• Bartender: Most of what you do lives in shared media, and a platform can change the rules overnight. Build an owned channel — a list, a page, a place guests can find you — alongside it.
• Dance Teacher: Your best media is owned and in the room: the welcome, the lesson, the floor. Add a list you control, so a venue change can’t take your students with it.

TALK ABOUT IT

• If you sorted last month’s publicity into the four kinds, which column would be fullest, and which would be empty? What does the empty one cost you?
• Think of the last time a stranger came to your room because of something earned or shared. Could you tell how they’d heard? What would it take to find out next time?
• Where are you paying for attention you could have earned? What would you need to do differently in the room first?