What does PESO stand for in social media content strategy?

• A. Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned
• B. Public, Engagement, Strategy, Optimization
• C. Paid, External, Social, Outreach
• D. Personal, Employee, Social, Outreach

Answer: (A)

Paid, Earned, Shared, and Owned media is a framework for planning how content moves across different channels. Paid media covers the paid placements that push content to audiences, like ads or sponsored posts. Earned media is exposure gained without payment, such as journalistic coverage, influencer mentions, or organic mentions. Shared media involves amplification through audiences themselves—retweets, shares, comments, collaborations—driven by social engagement. Owned media includes the channels you control, such as your website, blog, or brand apps, where you publish content on your own terms.

This mix lets a strategy reach people in multiple contexts and provides a path for measurement across channels. The other options use terms that don’t align with the standard PESO model and thus don’t map to these four channel types.