What is Content Amplification?
There’s only one problem with creating fantastic content, and that’s getting the right people to see it. Content amplification is a marketing term used to define the ways content can be amplified using online channels.
Marketers can often use template strategies and wait for results to appear to them instead of engineering their marketing to produce results for them. Truly effective content marketing (the key word here being ‘effective’) will generate leads and drive your business forward. But great content on its own isn’t always enough.
The harsh reality is: where a million voices shout for attention, making your own voice heard above the noise will either make or break your digital marketing strategy. This is where content amplification comes into play.
Key tips for amplifying content
1. Make it interactive
Bring content to life by making it fun and memorable. Successful content amplification encourages the user to actively engage with your content.
2. Visualise the content
Make your content easier to consume by guiding your audience and encouraging them to share.
3. Capture the attention of your audience
Make users want to stick around for longer, in turn increasing dwell time and improving conversion rates.
4. Maximise your investment
Make the most of your existing resources – creating great content takes time.
Content amplification uses specific channels online to ‘amplify’ your content, beyond the organic posting on your blog. Examples of amplification channels include:
- Facebook ads
Today, we’ll share some of our top tips on how to amplify your content to get the best results from those cleverly crafted pieces of content.
Let’s begin with asking:
Why is content amplification so important?
Content amplification does three major things:
- Expands your audience reach
- Establishes you as a trusted brand in your industry
- Creates new leads, opportunities and sales
Amplification helps to get your content seen by your intended audience at the right time, which could help you receive a higher return on investment. But without the extra leg work to really catapult your content, your marketing efforts could be wasted.
Tip 1: Shift the attention from you to your customers
Effective content marketing is like an invigorating conversation at a dinner party. It’s not the annoying guy in a tuxedo boasting about the heated seats in his two-seater coupé. It’s not fun when all someone ever does is talk about themselves, so don’t produce content that only talks about how great you are, this method might get you impressions, but it certainly won’t attract a loyal audience. What you really want to do is intrigue, discuss and debate with your audience – you want to engage them.
Ask not what your customers can do for you; ask what you can do for them
A customer-focused strategy will add value to your campaigns because you’re getting to know your audience and building trust with your customers which in turn encourages loyalty. You’re treating them like the wonderful individual that they are – and not just an email address in your database.
Where are your customers? How are they consuming content? And what platforms are they using?
Since the birth of Google, SEO marketers have scrambled to get high quality content to be discoverable in search engines and social media. Sure, you can pepper your blogs with keywords, but we want true engagement! We want effective content that adds value. The best place to start is in finding out what devices your customers are using and when your traffic is peaking, so you can tailor your content and calls-to-action to either mobile, app, web, etc. to make for a flawless user experience.
What motivates your customers to engage with your content?
Is it free incentives? Are they busy finance directors that love snackable content on the commute home? Do people look to you for expert knowledge of your industry? Find what people love about you and amplify it. You can measure trends in your content by click-rate or you can take a more qualitative approach and measure audience participation with posts, separating your influential content from the stagnant.
What topics drive the most engagement with your brand?
Before you can answer this question, you’ll need to perform some basic analysis of your content engagement levels. For instance, you can conduct a split test by posting a variety of content and measuring your website traffic before and after you post. Change the titles, change the structure and alter the tone to get an idea of what garners the most attention from your audience. ‘The future of’ titles tend to do especially well on LinkedIn, for example, as it’s a platform geared toward industry expertise and business trends. Once you know what peaks your audience’s interest, you can do more of it.
Tip 2: Create a variety of content and split test
Variety is the spice of life and if you’re serving a buffet of content, a balanced diet is key. You don’t want to serve the same thing every day—that would be boring and predictable. Instead, save your big pieces of meaty content for when you know you’re going to receive peak interest. Likewise, serve regular dishes of content throughout the week. This will increase trust in your brand because you’re showing consistency, and consistency is key to an effective content marketing strategy.
On Friday’s, you could serve your audience a slice of chocolate cake because we all enjoy something fun to read and personality helps set you apart. This could be an informal creative piece or a chance to promote a new product. By constantly revolving your content, you’re keeping your audience alert and interested, which in turn generates loyal followers.
Weekends aren’t off limits, either. Mobile content can be digested on the go and you can take advantage of weekends being a time where post rates slightly decrease as most businesses don’t tend to post as much. If you do post on the weekend it may get fewer impressions, but it’ll likely get a higher engagement rate, making it a great time to test bigger, heavier pieces of content.
Test, test, test!
Conducting A/B tests or split tests each week will greatly improve your engagement rates, as you’ll start to see what your audience actually respond to. And no detail is too trivial: for health insurers Humana, changing the micro-copy on a website button from “Get started now” to “Shop Medicare Plans”, achieved a 192% increase in clicks!
The most important thing to remember here is that, although we can estimate consumer behaviour trends, the ‘optimum time’ to post content is entirely unique to each business, as you will each have your own set of global customers with their own time-zones which will have an impact on what, where, and when you post.
Being strategic with your content plan will give you the upper hand over your competitors, as you’re essentially creating a heat map of when people engage with your brand.
Tip 3: Develop an employee advocacy programme
Word of mouth is perhaps the most effective form of advertising, probably because it’s the most truthful form of advertising and the hardest to manufacture. Which tells us two things: we trust things more when the people we like trust them, and we’re more likely to take recommendations from those we trust. Which is why when peers and colleagues share content it tends to go viral!
A social media advocacy program (which is a fancy way of asking staff to share/like work-related content), will ignite your content from within! That’s exactly why there’s been a massive rise in employers encouraging employees to share content on social media – because it is an effective form of content marketing.
For assistance, tools like Audiense and BuzzSumo will analyse, filter and present Twitter data to help you track your most influential advocates. The trick though is in deciphering how your employees use social media. They could be enthusiasts or inactives, thought- leaders or networkers. But once you establish their unique strengths, you’ll be equipped to nurture your ambassadors with a blend of training, tools and content to really make the magic happen.