Use the Force: Why Content Amplification is Your Biggest PR Asset
Most of the time, we marketers are focused on the “next big thing.” As the industry changes, we constantly feel pressure to be on the cutting edge and ahead of our competitors. That’s good! That certainly should be part of our strategy. But, if you will pardon a quick Star Wars reference, I think the marketing force is already strong with you. You just need to use it.
Recently, I read an interesting article in Forbes written by John Hall titled, “7 PR Trends You Need To Know In 2016.” On the surface, you may think that being on the cutting edge of all the latest trends is exactly what this article discusses. For the most part, you’d be right.
However, I want to focus on his third point – the importance of content amplification – because I think it is vitally important to any PR strategy. What makes content amplification so interesting is that its focus is getting the most out of what you already have, not necessarily trying to find something new.
What do I mean, and what exactly is content amplification? Well, let’s say that you create an e-book focused on showing off your thought leadership credentials in your industry. You already have a company Facebook page, email marketing capability and a list of mailing addresses for important contacts. None of the tools I just mentioned would be considered particularly new or groundbreaking. However, using them all in conjunction with your new content can help you bring about significant PR gains.
At this point you’re probably thinking, “Aaron, of course I’m going to send my new content out across all appropriate channels.” You’re right, for new content that seems fairly obvious. However, even your “old” content can be extremely useful when using a content amplification strategy.
Let’s say you have a blog and you use Google Analytics or some other tool for compiling data on your website. This means that you have the ability to see which blog posts are performing well over time. As you look at your statistics, you notice a blog post from 2012 that has unusually high page view data.
That means people are interested.
At this point, you know you have a piece of quality content that people in your industry are interested in. Depending on what type of post it is, you could post it to social media as a #ThrowbackThursday post.
Before I go any further, I want to make one thing abundantly clear. Before you can amplify your content, you must first start with quality content.
If there is any “PR trend” for your brand to focus on in 2016, it should definitely be the importance of quality content. In all reality, that trend is as old as time – because it works. Starting with quality gives you the opportunity to then amplify that content across your media channels.
So search your feelings…er, your content strategy…and use the force that’s already in you. It could change the way you look at PR.
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