What is Earned Media Value?
Earned Media Value (EMV) puts a price on reach you didn’t pay for. It answers one question: if we’d bought this reach with ads, what would it have cost?
In Oktopost, EMV takes the impressions and clicks your advocates generate and values them at the ad rates your team actually pays. So when someone asks what your employee advocacy program is worth, you have a number, in your own currency.
Why do advocacy teams need it?
Picture your QBR. Advocates are sharing, the impressions chart is going up, and someone in the room asks: “Okay, but what’s that actually worth?”
Leadership and finance talk in money. Impressions and clicks can look like a lot of activity with no clear value attached. That’s a shame, because this kind of reach is some of the most valuable you can get. Nielsen’s research has long shown that people trust recommendations from people they know more than any form of advertising, and every time an employee shares your content, they bring that trust with them.
You don’t need to prove advocacy works. You need to show what it’s worth, in a language everyone in the room already speaks.
How is Earned Media Value calculated?
There’s no single official EMV formula. Most teams use one of two methods, and Oktopost gives you both:
MethodFormulaExampleEMV (CPM)(Impressions ÷ 1,000) × CPM200,000 impressions at a $30 CPM = $6,000EMV (CPC)Clicks × CPC1,000 clicks at a $5 CPC = $5,000
Say your advocates get 200,000 LinkedIn impressions this quarter, and your team pays a CPM of $30. That reach is worth $6,000. No spreadsheet required.
How does EMV work in Oktopost?
Set your own rates
Add what you pay for ads on LinkedIn, X, Facebook and Instagram. When finance asks where the number came from, the answer is simple: our own ad costs.
Adjust rates for individual campaigns
Every campaign uses your account rates by default. If one targets a pricier audience, like senior IT decision-makers, you can override its rates without changing anything else.
Report it in Social BI
Two new metrics, Earned Media Value (CPM) and Earned Media Value (CPC), are in the Posts data source in Social BI. Add them to any report or dashboard, and include them in your CSV and PDF exports.
Where can you use EMV?
QBRs: show what your reach would have cost to buy, not just how many impressions you got.
Budget planning: compare what advocacy delivered with what the same exposure would cost in paid social.
Campaign reviews: break EMV down by campaign or network to see where advocates add the most value.
Saving time: set your rates once and EMV updates on its own, so you can retire the side spreadsheet.
Oktopost Insight: Fujitsu found that employee advocacy delivered 3.6 times better value than the same spend on paid social. With EMV, every team can make that comparison with its own numbers.
EMV is one part of the bigger picture. For the full view, including leads and influenced pipeline, see how to measure employee advocacy.
How do you get started?
Earned Media Value is live now for every Oktopost account whose license includes Advocacy.
Already using Oktopost? Add your CPM and CPC rates, then drop the two EMV metrics into any Social BI report. Not on an Advocacy license yet? Talk to your Customer Success Manager about adding it.
New to Oktopost? Try our employee advocacy ROI calculator to see what a program could deliver.
For more insights, request a demo.
The post How to calculate Earned Media Value for employee advocacy appeared first on Oktopost.
