A 13th century Buddhist monk talked about how a tiny blue fly won’t get very far on its own, but once it grabs onto the tail of a thoroughbred horse it is able to travel ten thousand miles. The conversations about your cause works exactly the same way.
Most of the time you converse on Facebook and Twitter with the same people over and over and over again.
While this is good for deepening relationships, you won’t be able to diversify and expand your audience in the long run. Being part of conversation topics that are outside of your cause enables you to expand beyond these circles.
Creating More Reach for Content Through Combined Relevance
The great thing about Christmas is that everyone talks about it!
Whether people love Christmas and celebrate it every year, or hate Christmas because they feel it’s over-commercialized, everyone has something to say. If you’re able to combine conversations about your cause with these conversations, you can tap into new audiences.
Three Ways To Make Combined Relevance Work
The idea of combined relevance is pretty simple. It means combining two topics that one audience is interested in. Dan Zarrella writes:
“Combining two apparently unrelated niches you can create a piece of content likely to go viral with people who just happen to be into both things.”
- Consider Your Brand. Be smart about the trending conversations you decide to join. Make sure that your organization’s voice is sincerely interested in the topic and grounded in your mission.
- Respect the Crowd. Make sure that your focus is on the conversation, and not overly-focused on promoting your own agenda.
- Be Positive. People tend to prefer positive conversations over negative ones.
For example, if your organization provides free books to children, you could talk about how you’re delivering those book using Santa’s sleigh.
Sounds like great advice. I hate to say I don’t *quite* get how this would play out in the real world …i.e. how to implement this. Any chance you could provide more examples?