This article contains excerpts from Crank up the volume: Harnessing content amplification to drive leads.
It goes without saying that when PR and communications professionals launch a campaign or create a new piece of content, they want it to reach the ends of the universe. Especially considering the huge investment in time and resources that goes into creating content and messaging to make sure it’s original, useful to the target audience, and readily consumed.
Once you’ve finally finished your piece of content or created a rocking campaign, it can be tempting to just move onto the next project. But for those of us who have ever launched a well-thought-out campaign that fell way short of the intended outcomes, you know that the old adage “If you build it, they will come” doesn’t work in the digital age.
Although it’s possible that lacklustre results could mean your messaging missed the mark with your audience, but more likely it was because people didn’t see it. With many high-quality campaigns going undiscovered, we have to consider another culprit that may be negatively impacting the performance of PR activities: content shock.
Content shock, as stated by Mark Schaefer, author of The Content Code, occurs because “content supply is exponentially exploding while content demand is flat”. While the same number of people are searching for content today, infinitely more people, and brands, are producing more content all the time. That means your content has to compete with an ever-growing pool of other great (and yes, sometimes not-so-great) content — all vying for the attention of the same audience.
The effects of content shock can be disappointing, but they can be counteracted with a few content amplification techniques. By leveraging content amplification, a set of tactics used to increase the reach of content in order to get it on as many different platforms and seen by as many interested consumers as possible, PR and communications professionals can build campaigns that make an impact.
Mark Schaefer goes on to state that the importance of content amplification is continuing to grow. What’s happening now, he says, is that “we are moving to a situation where amplification arguably matters more than the quality of content.” And Mark isn’t alone in this sentiment – more and more content marketing thought leaders recommend reversing the 80/20 rule. Rather than spending 80% of your time on content creation and the remaining 20% on promoting your content, the lion’s share should be focused instead on content amplification.
To learn more about leveraging content amplification check out our guide, Crank up the volume: Harnessing content amplification to drive leads.
