You have killer content on your hands: it’s engaging, it’s informative, it adds real value to your audience, and yet – only a handful of people ever get to see or hear it. If that scenario is all-too-familiar, you likely have a problem:
focusing on making quality content but not nearly enough on getting it out there.
This is where content amplification comes into play. Let’s get right into it:
What is content amplification?
The most straightforward description is to say that content amplification is a multichannel approach to increasing the impact of your content by promoting and distributing it to a wider audience. The aim is to ‘amplify’ your reach through a wide range of ways, both organic and paid.
Content vs reach – the struggle is real.
Just a quick word before I go on: ’wider audience’ meaning is often misunderstood as the maximum possible audience when in fact, it means reaching your target audience on as many sites and platforms as possible.
The harsh truth is that for every piece of content you post online, there are millions of others all over the world competing with you for the attention of your audience. If you’re not sharing it all around, you’re basically relying on sheer luck of people just stumbling across your content organically or by recommendation. Make no mistake – there’s not enough luck in this world to make that happen for you.
Simply put, the challenge of writing useful, engageable content for specific groups of people is matched (and possibly even surpassed) only by the challenge of elevating it further. Gone are the days where you could just flesh out great content and reap the benefits – you MUST build and execute an effective strategy to spread out your content in multiple ways and have it reach your target audience.
Content amplification is considered an umbrella term for a number of various techniques and methods of boosting your content’s signal, so to speak, to get it in front of desired people. In other words, it’s a long avenue you should definitely explore in the quest to drive engagement and conversions from your existing content.
Your ability to use whatever means you have at your disposal outside of your usual content distribution practices has never been more important. As such, two key elements without which effective content amplification won’t be possible are strategic approach and persistence if you want your work to be seen. Investing time in content creation should be reciprocated by an equal amount of time spent in amplifying it. Otherwise, what’s the point?
The rules of digital amplification
The number one thing to understand here is that content amplification is part of a wider content marketing strategy.
It’s safe to say there’s a content war out there, even if your niche is fairly specific. Mind you – I’m not talking about quality but the quantity in general – A LOT of material online is shitty and ultimately worthless but it doesn’t stop it from taking away from yours.
Add to the fact that social media networks and Google (for the most part) favor paid content over organic and odds aren’t in your favor. In fact, it might be even disheartening as paying for promotion isn’t always realistic due to certain budget restrictions. Just as solely relying upon a single type of traffic is unwise, so is paying for everything. Hence, your ability to think ahead becomes all the more important.
Those looking for a quick win will be disappointed to learn that content amplification is mostly about playing the long game. A respectable amount of organic traffic to your digital real estate is achievable with patience, SEO optimization, and commitment – providing you’re publishing quality content in the first place.
As soon as you get the hang of audience amplification, you’ll see incrementally better results. I find the organic part of content amplification much more interesting and encompassing as it offers more variety and ways to cover as much ground as possible. Plus, you’re not bound by financial constraints – always good to keep a few extra bucks in your pocket, isn’t it?
Pick your targets for amplified growth
So what can you do?
As an essential piece of every marketing strategy, be active on the social media platforms your audience frequents the most. Common sense dictates you want to share your stuff on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and such but also go beyond it. The first two have dedicated, laser-focused groups where you can engage with other members and push your content in a subtle manner.
There are plenty of platforms and niche communities like Medium, GrowthHackers, and Quora where you can post your articles and blog posts word for word or slightly tweak and repurpose them, for instance. Use your newsletter (you must have one!) to promote your content directly to your audience (a short copy + link work really well), and leverage your relationships with influencers to amplify your content. Naturally, you’ll want to use a couple of content amplification tools to make your job easier.
That would be a crude overview of content amplification strategies that work like a charm. All of this is a separate topic I’ll cover in-depth soon but I’ll leave you with the punchline:
a lot can be done if you have the framework and determination.
Benefits of content amplification
One of the things that content amplification has a major impact on is organic ranking. It goes like this: when you promote and share your stuff, automatically increase its reach and chances for it to earn backlinks. And we all know having link-worthy content is highly beneficial for landing at the top spots in Google’s SERP.
At its core, content amplification is about creating links and shares – two trackable and measurable goals that don’t take much to replicate success across all pieces of content. With that in mind, there are several benefits of content amplification:
Extended exposure
Optimizing for important ranking factors
Encouraging engagement
Increased organic brand presence
Another way to think of it is as a fairly early sign of your content’s long-term results. Since you’ll be spending some resources anyway, the smartest bet is on developing a meaningful, long-lasting relationship with your target audience. You get to be their trusted advisor and drive continuous traffic rather than trying to score short-term wins. On a personal side, I’d add it’s also much more gratifying – there’s something about that warm, fuzzy feeling inside when someone thanks you for your work.
And with far less facial hair.
2020’s will come with their own brand of challenges, twists, and turns, especially as competition for more visibility and higher rankings rises. Whatever happens, you can be certain you’ll stay on the right path if you focus on building and maintaining a solid content amplification strategy.
Adding audio to your content amplification model
Audio is a fairly new addition to content amplification media but it’s also one that will be super important to incorporate as soon as possible.
With an ongoing content overload, audiences have gotten more demanding and picky, as they have every right to be. User behavior has shifted, driving content consumption to be on their own terms: when they want it and where they want. It’s not just subpar content: readers no longer have the time or will to spend their precious time solely reading, period.
Content is evolving and audio is the most obvious example of it. In the US alone, two-thirds of the population are listening to some form of online audio, spending on it an average of nearly 17 hours every week. It’s not just a northern hemisphere thing: similar numbers showing growth are reported across the globe as people spend more of their time listening.
As an audio freak, I can verify that audio has this amazing ability to reach audiences in places most visual mediums aren’t able to. For instance, adding audio to your blog post is a great yet simple way to make your content portable. A 5-6 minute audio blog can easily fit into a busy schedule. In fact, audio’s different formats and types are suitable for almost every occasion, whether it’s a short burst of information, podcasts that feature long(er) stories with developed narratives, news-like updates, and so on – virtually every topic and length is represented.
On top of all, 2019 will be remembered as the year Google made one of the most important changes to its search engine, and adding podcasts (as audio’s blockbuster star) to search results. By making it easier to discover podcasts and growing the number of listenership, Google is prepping the turf for long-term audio SEO. Honestly – is there any company on this planet better positioned when it comes to sorting out huge amounts of audio data?
Granted, audio SEO is still in its early stages but if you want your digital podium to become larger, audio will soon be a mandatory addition to your content’s arsenal.
Conclusion
Whatever the end goal is, the point of content is to add value and be consumed. This post is intended to be a starting point for content and audience amplification but tips and advice mentioned here are just a part of what you can do. Feel free to try out new things as there is no set formula for success. Who knows: you might have a far better idea of amplifying your content and expanding your reach! Just remember it takes time to see the results of your efforts.
I’ll be covering the topic of content amplification in-depth in the next few weeks so keep an eye on these pages – more stuff coming up!
Image credits:
https://giphy.com/gifs/globaltv-reach-struggling-reaching-kG1fuK48pvTrb6o51K
https://giphy.com/gifs/culture--think-hmm-d3mlE7uhX8KFgEmY
https://giphy.com/gifs/stoner-sees-isopropyl-xSM46ernAUN3y