Developing content is probably not the most difficult thing in the world. What many businesses struggle with though, is keeping the momentum in promoting and distributing their content. After developing the blogpost, white paper or ebook, the job is NOT done…
The power is in the promotion and distribution of your content. That is why you need a “Content Amplification Strategy”.
The goal of amplification is to increase brand awareness while encouraging your audience to move through your sales funnel and boost ROI. Therefore, a content amplification strategy is NOT a one-off or a specific tactic, but an ONGOING process. It’s a multichannel approach to promote and distribute content. And no, just having one paid campaign on Facebook or LinkedIn is not a strategy.
Let me share with you a few tips, how you can bring your content to life:
TIP 1 SUMMARIZE YOUR BUSINESS NEEDS
Make sure you understand your companies’ mission and vision, core expertise and offering, and business and sales objectives. Set smart goals and KPIs because you will need them when you start analyzing the results of your content later on. Also, make sure that you have the right resources available. Hire that extra team member, foresee enough budget to outsource your copywriting, translations, video creations, or graphic designing tasks.
TIP 2 FOCUS ON YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE
I already mentioned it in my previous blogpost “Content Marketing is NOT for industrial companies”: understanding your target groups’ interests, pain points, and desires is key. Research what they already know about your company and the products or services you are offering. How does their customer journey look like when they purchase something? How will your solutions bring value to them or their company? Which social media channels do they use? Which events do they visit? What do they like to read? You probably have a marketing communications plan in place, that includes all of this information. If not, it’s never too late to start developing one. Download our marketing communication template (for FREE), it can be a good starting point.
TIP 3 OPTIMIZE YOUR CONTENT MIX
The traditional content mix exists of owned media, paid media, earned media, and shared media. I recommend, to keep shared media (mainly social media) separately because when the social media platforms decide to close down (like Hyves in the Netherlands) or suddenly change their algorithm it will immediately affect your reach.
How your content mix will look like, depends on your goals. For example, if brand awareness is your main goal, your content mix will look different than when your goal is lead generation. Overall, I always recommend to first establish your own media (website, webshop, blog, landing pages blog, your events collateral, email) and then start using the other media types to drive traffic to your own media. Don’t forget to share your content with your employees, they might be your biggest ambassadors and will probably share the content in their personal network.
TIP 4 PLANNING
For every piece of content you want to promote and distribute, the objective and the target group need to be crystal clear, it needs to fit into one of the pillars/themes/topics of your content strategy, the content purpose and KPI’s need to be clear. You need to decide on the channels you are are going to use and that fit into your budget, what format and types you are going to choose (f.e. blog posts, video, infographic). Then we have the different techniques that we are going to use, and also the different tools.
Always choose channels that have a similar brand perception as yours. Follow your customers where they are already active, for example, on social media, but it can also be events where you decide to have a speaker slot. And last but not least, choose channels and tactics that fit within your budget, aligned with your goals, and your KPIs.
TIP 5 MEASURE AND EVALUATE
This step is really, really important. If you don’t measure where you are and it will be difficult to navigate towards your goals. That’s really simple. You received a budget for your content marketing activities and your management wants to see what the ROI (return on investment) is. So you need to be able to back it up with the right numbers. (KPI’s Vs. results)
Analyze your owned media (website/blog results etc.). How many visitors visited your website, how long did they stay, what pages did they read, via which channel did they come. You can use Google Analytics, but you also have SemRush, Ahrefs, and many more. If you are using email marketing, analyze the open rates, click-through rates, etc. Do some A/B testing with different headlines to see which are the most successful.
Also, analyze your shared and paid media. When you are analyzing your social media, I recommend focusing on the engagement rather than solely on reach. I think that engagement is much more important because if people don’t click on the advertisement or don’t read your full blog post, then you didn’t deliver your message. There are a lot of tools available to analyze your social media efforts, such as Agorapulse, Hootsuite, Buffer, and many more. Most of these tools can also serve as a planning tool at once and they can measure the sentiment (are people engaging in a positive, neutral, or negative way). And don’t forget to check the analytics directly within your social media channels.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Think before you do; always have a strategy, planning, and budget in place.
- Collaboration is key; collaborate with management, sales, HR, Safety, and many more
- Hire experts were needed. Don’t hesitate to hire a new team member or outsource your content development to a copywriter.
- Don’t be serious all the time. Make it fun, try to put yourself in the shoes of your audience, try out new things, and think of them as a human because people buy from people.
- Be consistent, always give a lot of value and focus on quality rather than quantity.
- Don’t forget about your internal audience when promoting your content they can be your most important ambassadors
- Keep analyzing your results. So you can always modify when needed.
And remember, content marketing is not a quick win, it will bring value in the long term.
Do you want to develop a content strategy for your company, but you don’t know where to start? Don’t hesitate to contact me, I would love to help you!
Katja
My name is Katja De Witte. I’m a marketer at heart with 20 years of experience in B2B Marketing Communication, and passionate about content. I’m the founder of Accretios, and support business leaders and marketers in various sectors to increase their visibility, generate new leads, and boost their brand with content marketing. Next to leading Accretios, I’m also Communication Director at Air Liquide for Northern Europe.
I make full use of my expertise and experience within the industry, working with a team of specialized copywriters and social media specialists. Besides setting up a well-founded marketing communication strategy, we can also write your blog posts, social media posts, newsletters, e-books, and white papers.