By “Your content isn’t getting amplified? Well, maybe it’s not good enough.” If I haven’t said that out loud before, I’ve definitely thought it. But it’s the least helpful piece of feedback. It’s not specific and it doesn’t offer solutions for next time.
Instead, consider this:
Maybe your content doesn’t match the user’s intent. As in, there’s a disconnect between the reason a user logs onto a social platform and your content. Someone logs onto Threads to see updates about the Los Angeles wildfires, and instead they see your headline writing tips. They go to LinkedIn to see acquaintances’ job updates, and instead they see your audience-building advice. The problem isn’t the “goodness” of anything, rather, it’s that it didn’t serve the user’s broad desire on that platform. (And likely, the content didn’t get to the root of why your audience should care. Rand’s post on amplification is definitely worth a read, or a re-read for the SparkToro blog OGs.)
This raises the need to understand what your audience aims to do when they scroll a given social platform. After all, they’re definitely not scrolling in hopes of resharing others’ content. They might be scrolling to:
Be entertained. If they’re scrolling for entertainment, does your content deliver on that? If you’re aiming to be funny, you need to make sure you nail the punchline.
Keep up with friends and family. Did you position your content in a way that’s easy for them to understand? Maybe you’re sharing some professional news but you used a bunch of jargon to explain. Make sure you’re speaking your audience’s language (and here, your audience might be your college friends!).
Learn something new about their job or interest. The key word here is “new.” If they’re looking for novelty, is your content original or fresh in some way? You’d be wise to lead with a hook that perfectly describes a pain point, or explain front and center that you’re sharing previously unknown insights from your original research.
Learn Your Audience’s Intent
You could learn about your audience’s intent in a number of ways. You could talk to them, conduct a social media audit, or zoom out and learn from their other online behaviors.
Talk to them. If you can reach out to your customers directly, this is great. Schedule a time for a 20-minute chat, which is often an easier ask than, say, 30 minutes. Ask them about the websites they read, the social accounts they follow, what they’re generally looking for when they log onto a social platform. If you’re lucky, they’ll be honest and accurate. But you’re likely to run into accidental lies or bias. Someone might say they read the Wall Street Journal, but in actuality they read Morning Brew.
Run a social media audit. Personal opinion here; I think this is easier to do if you have a B2B audience. Identify a couple of ideal job titles, find people who have these titles on LinkedIn, create a saved search for this audience, and voila — a real-time feed of your audience. Consume this content and learn what’s top of mind for them, what they care about, and how they describe their business challenges.
On the B2C side, you might need to put in more effort in how you uncover your audience’s intent. If I’m marketing to consumers, I’m going to create a new Instagram account (I think the cool kids call this a “Finsta?”) and curate a feed based on my ideal customer profile. I’ll follow or engage with some aspirational brands (think: if I’m an eco-friendly beauty brand, I’m following some mainstream accounts like Lush Cosmetics and Burt’s Bees) and wish-list celebrity/influencer ambassadors (in keeping with the eco-friendly brand example: Shailene Woodley, Lauren Singer, or Aditi Mayer), essentially creating an Explore tab that represents my audience’s feeds.
Learn from their other online behaviors. Of course… what’s tricky is that all of the above information involves already knowing at least something about your audience. If you don’t know where to start, I have an app for that. 🙂
Follow the Breadcrumbs of Audience Research
If you’re using SparkToro — and yes, you can create an always-free account! — you can learn more about the people who visit a given website. If you get a decent amount of traffic (even 1,000 page views per month might yield you some solid insights), you can type in your own website. Or you can type in the website of someone who shares an audience with you. This might be one of those aspirational brands.
Let’s go back to my eco-friendly brand example. Maybe we share an audience with plant website TheSill.com. I can see the demographics, online behaviors, and even relevant topics for this audience.
TheSill enthusiasts also visit FoodandWine.com and MarthaStewart.com. They’re looking up “cheap tall plants,” and they’re a pretty even gender split. Just this snapshot of the overview gives me a sense of which websites I might want to run ads on, and some content I should consider creating.
I can even see that this audience is especially likely to be on Reddit, Instagram, and Pinterest. I can dig deeper, find their most-frequented Subreddits, and start lurking to learn more about this audience. I’d also look up my competitors’ Pinterest feeds and see where there might be gaps in their content that I could fill. I’d also look for repurposing opportunities, and turn a blog post into a multi-step tutorial pin.
I’d dig into each tab on SparkToro, finding out everything I can about this audience and how to create content that resonates with them. I’d look at their Trending Keywords — and I’d see that “part sun shrubs zone 5” was recently trending, which might inspire some ideas. I’d also look at Content Ideas:
So now I’m seeing a lot of ideas for beginner-level plant content, and I know the most popular social networks in this audience. I’d design some pins with a headline like, “12 vertical garden ideas for small spaces” or “Repotting orchids for beginners.” I might even go to a Subreddit to source ideas for that vertical garden post. And if I have some budget, I might run some ads with various headline ideas to see if that inspires additional content and ad campaigns.
Of course… you don’t have to use SparkToro. (But you’re on the SparkToro blog, so of course you’re going to get the content-led pitch here.) The point is to keep following those breadcrumbs of knowledge about your audience, learn more and more about them, and try your darnedest to create content they actually care about. Sometimes that hard-to-swallow-pill isn’t that you’re not good enough. It’s that you have to keep doing the work.
