As per one recent study, about 73% of B2B marketers and 70% of B2C marketers say that content marketing is a core part of their larger outreach strategy. Yet, at the same time, this poses something of a challenge – with so many brands out there creating enormous amounts of content on a daily basis, how do you stand out and make the best impression that you can on your target audience?
This is why a solid content amplification strategy couldn’t be more important. There’s an old saying that asks – “if a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” Without a content amplification strategy, everything you’re putting online is a little bit like that. If you publish a blog post and nobody can find it, does it really exist at all?
Probably not – but a content amplification strategy can make sure that’s something you don’t have to worry about at all.
‘I feel the need… the need for speed’ – Understanding the power of content amplification
Think of content amplification as the difference between publishing a piece of content and hoping someone finds it versus publishing that same piece of content and making sure it gets to the biggest audience possible as quickly as possible.
This is all something you can do in a couple of different ways, depending on how your business wants to play things. You could always amplify your content using paid ads, for example. PPC (pay-per-click) advertising gives you placement at the top of search engines like Google and is great for building awareness. Blog posts in particular, tend to excel with this strategy.
Email marketing and guest posting are also examples of viable content amplification strategies. Believe it or not, people still love getting emails from businesses – they just have to be the right emails. You could send out updates to your email list, letting them know you’ve published a new blog post, white paper, video, or similar piece of content to make sure they’re aware of it.
With guest posting, you can write some great content for someone else’s blog or website and link back to your own. That way, some of their audience will hopefully make the journey and become a part of yours.
Why long-tail keywords are still oh-so-important
When a search engine like Google “crawls” a website to determine the search engine results pages, it looks for certain elements that might indicate high relevancy to what real people are searching for. Keywords are a big part of that and, in particular, long-tail keywords are essential.
These are phrases that are usually between three and five words. They’re more specific than generic terms, which allows you to amplify your content by targeting precise (and often niche) demographics.
But don’t forget about on-page SEO
Next, you have all the on-page elements for SEO to consider. Essentially, the quality content that you’re creating should take care of what actual people are looking for. On-page SEO optimisation helps take care of the needs of Google and its spiders (don’t worry, they’re not real spiders).
There are a number of things to consider to that end, including but not limited to:
- Make sure that whatever keyword you’re targeting is used not only throughout your page but in the URL of the page as well, if possible.
- If older content has outbound links to other websites, periodically check to make sure those links still work.
- Emphasise the readability of your content. Make sure everything is easily scannable.
- Include as many visual assets like images and videos as possible, wherever it makes sense.
- Make sure your site loads as quickly as possible, even on mobile devices. Your site cannot take longer than three seconds to load or engagement will suffer dramatically, which will bury your site (and its content) in the search engine results pages.
Amping it up via socials
Promoting your content through various social media channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter/X, and others is also a must for content amplification.
Influencer marketing, too, is a no-brainer these days. You can find someone who has a built-in audience that is similar to the one you’re trying to reach and enter into a partnership with them. Lauren Curtis, Rackaracka, Ozzy Man, Wengie, and others are amongst the top Australian influencers in 2023.
Backlinks still matter, but which backlinks?
The more backlinks you have, the higher your content will rank – thus improving its visibility exponentially. Just make sure that you do not buy low-quality backlinks. Try to earn them by publishing high-quality content on a regular basis and do so from as many authoritative domains as you can.
So, are you ready to rev up your marketing?
In the end, don’t make the mistake of assuming that there is a “one size fits all” box when it comes to content amplification. This is why you really need a strategy in place. What you need to do to get something like a video in front of as many people as possible won’t be the same as what you need to do for a blog post. Sometimes, you can get away with just using social media. Other times, it will take a Facebook/email marketing combo.
The point is that you had a content creation strategy that served you well, right? Take it one step further and create a content amplification strategy, too.
Think about it like this. Marketing of any kind is all about “saying the right thing to the right person at the right time.” That awesome blog post you wrote took care of “the right thing.” Your content creation strategy and those blog posts you published took care of “the right person” (if you’ve been using targeted content marketing, that is).
Now, you need to connect with them at just the right moment. All your SEO efforts will pay off eventually, but in the meantime, that content can be doing great things for you. And content amplification is how you make that happen. Test, test and test again and then once you’ve found the right mix for your audience, repeat and refine.
