AUDIENCE(10)

As a result, smart businesses are reinvesting in convenience, personal attention, and customer service as a means to convert SEEKERS immediately. BestBuy (@BestBuy) offers a best price guarantee and their helpful “Blue Shirts.” Walgreens (@Walgreens) offers a mobile app that lets you refill prescriptions and print Instagram pictures. And family-owned Hi-Time Wine Cellars (@MrHiTime) offers SHOPPERS a mobile app that uses videos, special promotions, and wine recommendations to enhance their shopping experience.4

What does it mean when everyone inside and outside your store has a supercomputer in their pocket? It means you had better help SEEKERS find you, inspire AMPLIFIERS with superior customer service, and acquire JOINERS so you can communicate directly with them in the future.





AMPLIFIERS


Whereas SEEKERS want information, AMPLIFIERS are looking for the warm, fuzzy feeling—and social recognition—that comes from sharing.





What AMPLIFIERS Want


Just like a wall of Marshall amplifiers (@MarshallAmpsUK) behind a lead guitarist, the AMPLIFIER audience has the potential to spread your messaging to people you could never reach otherwise. AMPLIFIERS aren’t just seeking information; they also hope to help or inform their own proprietary audiences (i.e., personal network). AMPLIFIERS raise the volume on your message and propel your content well beyond your marketing budget’s reach. Sometimes, they even help branded content “go viral”—the pinnacle of AMPLIFIER audience achievement (aside from gaining some public recognition for themselves).

To put it another way, AMPLIFIERS are audience members with audiences of their own, and they want to be heard. Your AMPLIFIER audiences include:

ADVOCATES

ANALYSTS

COMMENTERS

CREATORSc

INFLUENCERS

REPORTERS

REVIEWERS

SHARERS



Amplifiers are audiences with audiences, and they want to be heard.



Basically, if you’ve got a mouth or hands that can type, you can be an AMPLIFIER—all of whom share a few key attributes:

1. They share—that is, amplify—content or experiences that interest them personally or professionally.

2. They share content when, where, and how they want through both public and private channels.

3. They share content as a service to inform or entertain their own proprietary audiences (family, friends, followers, etc.).

4. They are AMPLIFIERS only lasts as long as it takes them to share information about your brand, products, services, content, or activities.



Keep in mind that your most vocal AMPLIFIERS are probably not strangers. Happy CUSTOMERS can serve double duty as AMPLIFIERS as can EMPLOYEES and PARTNERS. This is one reason why the best place to start with social media is often at home (more on that in Chapter 4).

AMPLIFIERS: The People Formerly Known as The Audience

Back in June 2006, NYU Professor of Journalism Jay Rosen (@JayRosen_NYU) penned a pointed commentary titled “The People Formerly Known as the Audience.”5 Written from the perspective of Internet-empowered consumers, the piece served as a wake-up call to media members who still believed they owned their audiences.

Jay not only put this notion to rest, he also enumerated how consumers had become content CREATORS capable of stealing attention away from mass media itself. As he stated:

You don’t own the eyeballs. You don’t own the press [. . .] You don’t control production on the new platform, which isn’t one-way. There’s a new balance of power between you and us.

AMPLIFIERS are the new, digitally savvy audience Jay contemplated. They are consumers with audiences all their own, and they’re under no obligation to help your brand whatsoever. Indeed, it is your obligation to create experiences, products, and services that get the people formerly known as the audience working in your favor.





How to Acquire AMPLIFIERS


Two key actions create AMPLIFIERS:

1. The consumption or creation of content about a company

2. The act of sharing that content with third parties



Amplification of any kind begins with content. It may be something an AMPLIFIER creates, something your company creates, or something from a third party, but there must be something to share, such as:

Blog posts

Experiences with your brand, products, or services

Images

Location information

Product information

Reviews

Written content (books, e-books, infographics, white papers, etc.)

Videos



With content in hand, consumers become part of your AMPLIFIER audience only when they choose to share that content with their own proprietary audiences (colleagues, family, friends, etc.). Notice that as with SEEKERS, AMPLIFIERS initiate the action that makes them a part of your audience. There’s no magic button you can push to force consumers to share positive messages about your company. Your best strategy is therefore the same as it is with SEEKERS: to create content and experiences that AMPLIFIERS want to share.