In this article, I want to show you how to make sure to reach a large audience each time you write a piece of content. So that the time invested in producing it, won’t be wasted!

You wrote an excellent article. Strangely each time you put together a piece of content, it feels like that is the most incredible creative work you’ve done in your entire life. Therefore, high expectations arise. You look forward to the moment when you will hit the publish button and see that content go through the blogosphere, go viral and get featured on Forbes or Inc. Magazine. Yet that is all a dream. In fact, as soon as you hit the publish button you barely get your dearest friends to read it. Why?

Usually, who writes for passion believes that writing alone is enough to be read. Instead, when you start doing it professionally, you realize how deceived you were. In fact, creating great content is only part of the job. The rest is about making sure it gets found, read and shared. That is why as a content writer you need to have a framework in place to make sure each time you write a piece of content you reach at least a few thousand people that are ready to engage with it.

Also, today many believe that posting their content around the web still give them control over what happens to it. Ownership is only part of the equation. Indexing is as relevant if not more than ownership of content. Therefore, you want to make sure your content gets indexed on a platform you control before syndicating it anywhere else.

How Social Networks Hooked Us

In one of my previous articles, I talk about the Hook Model. I explain what it is and how to use it ethically to transform your product or service into a habit for the user.

How to Build a Habit-Forming Product Ethically: The Drug Dealer Test!

Yet one of the most powerful weapons social networks use to grow their user base is the feed. The feed is the most addicting feature Social Media have. Not surprisingly we spend countless hours scrolling that feed in the hope of keeping our excitement level high for as long as possible. Almost like a drug addicted millions of people use the feed as the main source to get the information they look for.

Source: mediakix.com

In other words, the average person spends five years and four months of his/her life on social media. That is why if you want your content to reach a larger audience you must learn how to use the social media feed to feed your blog‘s traffic. However, if you’re tempted to stop creating content on your blog and start disseminating only through social media, there is something you’re missing out.

Indexing vs. Ownership of Content 

In the past all you needed was copyright. In short, once published a literary work that copyright did allow you to have control over it. Thus, you “owned” that piece of content.

Nowadays this is only in part true. In fact, the concept of ownership of content has changed. With the advent of the web and how search engines crawl it, ownership lost relevance in favor of indexing.

Indeed, each time you write a piece of content. You hit the publish button. That is how you’re claiming authorship on that. You want to make sure to have ownership on the publishing media outlet where your blog was posted. That is why your blog is the answer.

Start from your blog

In short, what matters is not who wrote the piece of content but where it was first indexed. For instance, let’s assume you wrote an article and published it on Medium. It doesn’t matter where you’ll post that content next. Since the article got first released on Medium, Google indexed it there. Creating an irreversible relationship among your story and a platform you don’t control!

Therefore, each time you publish on Medium, Quora, LinkedIn or any other publishing outlet it is almost like you’re giving up part of the “web ownership” over that content. Unless you use the following framework…

Content Amplification Framework

That is a framework in three steps with one objective:

GIVE YOU TOTAL CONTROL OVER YOUR CONTENT!

How? In three steps. First, indexing; second, spreading; third, experimenting.

Step One: Indexing

The first step is all about letting Google’s crawlers index your page so that your content is tied to your blog. Once drafted the coolest article in the blogosphere all you have to do is to hit the publish button!

As soon as you do so, billions of crawlers that are indexing the web will also walk on your page and understand where it belongs to. Time to take the second step.

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Step Two: Spreading

Beyond the traditional sharing, you must do (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest and StumbleUpon to mention the main ones). You want to syndicate your content on four major publishing outlets: Quora, LinkedIn Publishing, Medium, and beBee.

How to use Quora for Content Amplification

Quora is a social network where people post questions, and other people answer them. While Facebook is mainly about scrolling the feed passively, Quora is about actively engaging with a community of people that for the most part are interested in reading in-depth content. Back in March 2016 Quora had already over 100 million users, and it is the perfect place to start to build a following and amplify your content strategy.

If you don’t have an account yet see how to create one,

As soon as done go back and create your blog there.

Go on the icon on the top right corner, click on it and then go to “Blogs.”

On the top right corner click on “Create A New Blog.”

Once done, repost your article there! Why? A few reasons:

First, Quora will give you visibility that otherwise you wouldn’t have. Second, by having links that point back to your blog, you will drive traffic back to it. Third, less intuitive you might also improve your rankings (still testing this strategy out). In fact, when Google notices that your content is getting found (the original piece of content got first published and indexed from your blog) it may traffic back to your site.

Another thing to do is to atomize your blog post and use it to answer specific questions people on Quora have.

After personalizing the answer, you can insert a link at the end of the question so that people that want to know more can go back to your blog and read the entire article.

How to use LinkedIn Publishing for Content Amplification

In 2017 LinkedIn, the most popular professional network in the world reached over 500 million users. Time to syndicate your content there.

If you don’t have an account yet follow these simple steps:

Source: Linkedin.com

You can use LinkedIn for sharing your content and for writing posts with an extract from your articles.

Therefore the first step is to share a post as I did below,

Since Neil Patel had retweeted my post on Twitter, I used that to reshare it on LinkedIn and get some extra visibility which brought few dozens of visits back to the blog.

Also, I got an extract of the post and written an article on LinkedIn,

You could either repost the entire article if you wish or just an excerpt from it and then a link to bring traffic back to your blog. Among the two, the former is the most successful to amplify your content as much as possible. For instance, each time I republish an article entirely on LinkedIn publishing I get way more traction compared to just an extract. My assumption is the LinkedIn algorithm makes your story seen more in the feed the more in-depth the article is. But at times it also depends on the time and day it got published. Also usually LinkedIn feed is like a diesel engine, a post or update you posted a few days before will be showed again to some of your LinkedIn contacts.

One more thing to do to optimize your profile for content amplification is to add your articles to your experience,

In this way, anyone that is browsing your profile on LinkedIn will check your articles,

Time to move on to Medium!

How to use Medium for Content Amplification

I don’t know this platform well enough. However, this is a media outlet with over 60 million unique monthly visitors. Also, the audience on Medium is more selected, which makes a perfect place where to share your content. Also, there’s an import feature that allows most to share your stories quickly. So why not to do it?

 

I’m not getting traction on Medium because I started using it recently. It takes time to invest to earn trust and credibility before reaping the benefits. I will do some experiments in the next future, which I will share. Do you want to be the first to know?

Time to unravel another compelling personal branding platform, beBee!

How to use beBee for Content Amplification

beBee is a social media founded in February 2015. As of July 2016, it had about 11 million users even though they’re targeting to 40 million users. It is a brand new platform, and I find it has a great potential for both building business relationships and content amplification. What makes it unique? beBee is trying to bridge the gap between LinkedIn and Facebook by organizing its communities around shared interests, which are called hives. Let me give you a quick tour of beBee,

If you’re not yet registered, here the step-by-step guide to becoming a member.

As you can see, there are four main sections. Two relates to your professional profile and two to the content you share and interests you pick.