The Four I’s of Amplification

Today I want to talk to you about the four I’s of amplification. 

You spend a lot of time and effort creating content. 

It’s difficult.

It’s painful.

It’s taken you a while to get into the rhythm of creating content. 

You understand why you need to do it but as a business, like most businesses, you’re not set up to create content. 

So now you’ve created content and you just put it somewhere and something might happen. 

Everything I do with regard to what we do at TepFu and what our clients do is around getting the most bang for your buck, getting the best possible return on your investment. And all of that requires you to take as much advantage of your content as possible, to leverage it as much as possible. 

Now it wouldn’t be possible for me to be talking about amplifying content, without referencing the great god of amplification and content that is Gary Vaynerchuk. 

Gary Vee has absolutely, I don’t think there’s a better word than, smashed it when it comes to amplifying. Because he can create a hundred pieces of content from a single piece of content. 

And you can too. 

And I do too. 

I record some videos every month like this, and I have a process that turns it into lots of other bits of content. 

The reason why we turn it into lots of bits of content is because I don’t know when people are going to be online.

I don’t know what channel they’re going to be on. 

I don’t know what they’re going to be in the mood for.

I don’t know how much time they’re going to have to pay attention. 

So I try and package my content up in as many different ways and locations as possible. 

The first of the four I’s in amplification is to identify and create a content schedule. 

This is important because if you don’t have a content schedule, you will wing it. 

If you do have a content schedule you’ll see where the gaps are and you’ll start to ask yourself the questions; 

What can I put in there? 

What else can I use? 

And you’ll look at other stuff on your content schedule and you’ll think, “Well I’m doing stuff there with that, I wonder if I diced that and sliced that into ten different smaller ways – what could I do with it? 

Could I turn it into a series of posts on social? 

Or what about that series of posts on social, could I turn them into a bigger article?” 

You start to look at content as currency, when you see it on a schedule, you can start to look at it as a currency. And you know the three mechanisms that we talk about for getting social right apply across all amplification channels. 

One is curation, you’re curating content from various places. 

Another is you’re creating content internally, externally with customers, with suppliers, whatever. 

And the third is you’re generating conversation around your content. 

And all of those should form meaningful parts of your content schedule. 

I’d love to know if you do have a content schedule or not. 

If you don’t have one I’d love to find out more so I can help you. 

The second I is integrating social media with other channels. 

This is actually quite simple really. 

This is just about making sure that when you’re posting stuff on social that it’s going on to other channels, because most of the time we don’t do that, most of the time we just put stuff on social and then we forget about it. 

And actually where else could it be used? 

So getting yourself into the habit of saying “well it’s great that we’ve got that content there, but if it went on email what would it look like? 

And if it went on youtube what would it look like? 

And if it went on the side of our van, what would it look like? 

And if it went on the back of my business card what would it look like? 

If it went on WhatsApp, and TikTok and email marketing and blogging and podcasting and all the other possible variations. 

If we ran an event around that content series, what would the event look like? 

Is it a virtual event? 

Is it real?” 

There’s so many other things you can do with content from social to integrate. 

The third thing that I want to talk about is influencers. 

Now getting influencer strategy right is really key. 

Most people get it wrong. 

They think that size is everything. 

Size has nothing to do with influence. 

That’s the reality, size has nothing to do with influence. 

You could be a multi-million strong following on Insta and still sell no t-shirts. A

nd you can have five influencer friends who each have 50 connections, but they could be the most valuable connections in the world. 

So understanding who actually really is an influencer over your customers and prospects is really key. 

And they, if you can work out a way to bring them into your content, they will amplify it for you. 

Sometimes even for free. 

Not every influencer relationship is paid. 

Think about partner marketing, how could you build influencers and partners into your content strategy? 

And the last I is really around if. 

This is a simple one, if you don’t care about them, why would they care about you? 

And what do I mean in regards to amplification? 

If your content is written for you, then why would they share it? 

If your content is written for them then some of them will share it. 

So if you want to amplify your content, you’ve got to write for your audience, you’ve got to get off of the ego train, it’s not a judgment or criticism, you’ve got to get off the ego train and you’ve got to deliver content that’s going to matter to them. 

So that’s the four I’s of amplification; 

Identify,

Integrate, 

Influence and

If.