Content marketing is increasingly becoming more competitive. As a platform, the internet is simply replete with a variety of marketing-related content of various types and quality. Ultimately, with this content-rich environment, comes a greater demand for higher quality. This demand comes not only from the end-user, who is becoming more used to navigating (and, in many cases, ignoring) this deluge of content, but also from entities like Google, Bing, and Facebook, who view the experiences of their users as understandably critical. And as more brands allocate higher budgets towards content creation and marketing, you can expect that the bar will only continue to raise. In this article, we’ll discuss a few of the content amplification strategies that can help keep your content king.
Produce High-Value Content
Let’s be honest, would you promote or be willing to share subpar content? Of course not. Don’t lose sight of this reality — it’s as close to the end-user perspective as you can expect to objectively get in marketing. If it’s not good enough that you, yourself, would share it…chances are it won’t gain any traction with anyone else.
So start by creating top-notch, epic-quality content. Create content that is truly value-added. More importantly, create content that you would be proud to be associated with and that your audiences would consider a resource, or, at least, a source of entertainment.
Extract Nuggets and Share
More often than not, a brand or business can tweet and share snippets of their content with a minimized link to full content on their social media platforms. It’s something that many businesses fail to take advantage of, in spite of the ease of doing so.
This can do wonders for your content’s reach and mileage if you use this strategy effectively, and not just by widening the funnel. Consider any time that snippet gets shared via other social media platforms — you’ve probably set it up with a tracking URL for your analytics (and if you haven’t, you definitely should) and you’ve just gone from being another voice in the wind to being a Source.
This not only amplifies the content itself, it also works towards establishing a sense of thought leadership in connection with your brand.
Leverage Successful Content
There’s a neat strategy you might have heard of called the Skyscraper Technique, and Brian Dean of backlinko.com recently did a fantastic case study about this on his blog. You start with finding the biggest and best piece of content anyone has ever put on the web regarding the topic, industry, or keywords in question. Find out what this piece of content does well, why it sees the rankings and engagement that you’re looking for. Then find its weaknesses. If you’re lucky, something’s been poorly optimized. But it could be that the opportunity you’re looking for is that the content isn’t interesting enough, doesn’t communicate effectively, or maybe it’s trying to convey something to the wrong people in the wrong way.
Regardless, you want to find the biggest and best piece of content on the horizon and build something even bigger and better. Create content that is truly powerful enough that it becomes the point of reference on that topic. Do note that this is an intensive strategy that demands serious investment, but can also provide significant rewards.
Use Influencers to Increase the Reach of Your Content
With the rise and proliferation of social media channels has come the rise of social media celebs — people called influencers. These people have amassed a fan base or following, ranging anywhere thousands to millions, who are ready to consume content from them. Their audiences often like and prefer them to “real celebrities” because many of these people have the appeal of being more relatable to the “average-Joe” and more similar in terms of interests and perspectives.
Look for bloggers and social influencers with large and active audiences and ask them (and yourself) if your content would be a good fit for their reach. You can start with simple Google searches, or you can find a software-as-a-service platform like NeoReach’s influencer marketing platform to help connect you directly with influencers appropriate to your business and manage your campaign. Influencer marketing is quickly becoming an effective means of getting your content in front of the right set of eyes and, in the final analysis, that’s what marketing is all about.
