The Importance of Content Amplification: A Discussion With Chad Pollitt

Welcome to the podcast. I’m Shane Barker, your host of Shane Barker’s Marketing Madness Podcast. Today, we’ll discuss content amplification. My guest, Chad Pollitt, is a VP and co-founder of Relevance. He also serves as VP of Marketing at Empowered, has published three books, and frequently speaks about content amplification. Listen in as he shares tips on how to amplify your content and make the most of it.

Let’s start with the basics. Where did you grow up? Give us a little background about Chad—where did “little Chad” grow up? Tell us a bit about that.

So it’s funny. I did that mine was the same way mine growing up was. I grew up in South SAC, Sacramento, and I was one. I was minority. I was there was very few white people up at the elementary school that I went to and even the elementary school. So yeah, I’m very familiar with that, and people who don’t know that about me, but that is definitely one of the weird fun facts.

Yeah, me too—it’s kind of crazy when you think about it. Culturally, it’s interesting growing up that way. Obviously, it shapes us differently, right? Looking back, though, it gives you a different perspective on life. My wife always jokes that she can dress up in a ball gown one day or go out for chicken wings and beer the next. It’s that diversity you get from your background. I feel the same way—I’m glad I grew up a bit tougher. I’m not saying I’m some super-tough guy, but I had to figure things out. Each day was a new challenge, and being quick-witted with “your mom” jokes helped a lot. I was so skinny—110 grams or something crazy like that. I had to learn how to adapt, and although it has nothing to do with content marketing, it taught me to muscle through. I wouldn’t change it.

So, how big is your family? It sounds like you moved a lot—was it a military family, or something else?

That’s awesome. It’s funny, because I looked at your background, and it’s kind of crazy. I didn’t think there’d be even more layers to what you do. Right when I think, “Okay, this is Chad,” you show there’s even more you’re doing to help other people’s lives. You’ve gone tenfold on that. So that’s awesome.

Yeah. I mean, it’s a lot, man. You’re taking on a lot with everything you’ve got going on online, and then offline, too. That’s awesome if you can manage it. So, tell us—obviously we know you grew up as a minority, being white in what was probably an African American neighborhood, or whatever the neighborhood was. Tell us an interesting, fun fact—anything that would make people say, “I had no idea.” Do we even have enough time for that? I don’t know how much you want to disclose, you know. I mean…

Shut the front door! That’s why I asked these kind of questions, because you just never know what people are gonna come keep going. We’re gonna dig deep on this one.

That’s what’s funny—there are some parallels. I was a dancer too, probably not on your level, but still the white guy people assumed couldn’t dance. But I used to get down. I listened to a lot of hip hop. I don’t think I ever won any awards, but I’d show up as the red-bearded guy they’d think had nothing, then I’d break off a few moves, and they’d go, “Okay, he’s not just quick-witted—he can dance too. Let’s leave him alone this week.” Then I eventually gained some weight and went from grams to pounds, you know, because…

It is kind of crazy—I would have had no idea. But that’s the whole point of the podcast, right? You find out random facts about people that make you go, “You’ve got to be kidding me.” So now, aside from being a hip hop dancer, aside from teaching Britney Spears how to dance when she got older and all that fun stuff, you went to college in Indiana, right?

Yeah, no, I get it. It’s funny—we might need to compare our parents’ names, because we could be related. That’s how many parallels we’ve found. I was actually teaching at UCLA, and it was a similar thing. When I first got the call about the opportunity, I assumed my friends were messing with me. Later, when I told people I was teaching at UCLA, nobody believed me. I’d have to show them my paycheck stub or bring them into the classroom. They were like, “You? You’re not teaching the youth of America.” I was like, “Hey, glitch in the Matrix. I don’t know who approved this, but it happened.”

Teaching at a university is so different from anything else. At UCLA, my course was three hours long—6:30 to 9:30 p.m. I’d fly down from Sacramento, and let me tell you, putting that curriculum together gave me a whole new respect for instructors. We produce content, but three hours of it, keeping everyone’s attention when there’s the internet and everything else, was definitely a learning experience. I’m still there, but I’ve taken a few quarters off for the same reasons—my work schedule and trying to coordinate everything got tough.

So tell me about your experience teaching at the university for three years. I’ve only done it for about a year and a half, but I’d love to know how it was overall for you.

So you’re next-level crazy. You’re not even—you’re not even—you just ran past me like I thought we might have been on the same plateau of crazy, but now you’re gonna be the king and I’m gonna be the pawn or something. Okay, so you, at two universities, huh?

Yeah, that’s crazy. Yeah, we did the same thing. Wait, isn’t Mark Schaefer at Rutgers?

That’s awesome. Yeah, I had Mark—he was actually one of my speakers at UCLA. I had him come in because he came out with the book, oh my God, his most recent one. So what he did is, I had him speak because that’s what we would do. I mean, I try to fill the time, and as much as I feel like I’m entertaining and strikingly good looking, three hours of listening to me is like, “Jesus, there’s gotta be something better.”

oo funny. Guest speakers were definitely a goal. We did some group work too, so that was cool. So how did you jump into digital marketing? You graduated with an entrepreneurship degree—what year was that, ’99?

It’s funny, because I graduated high school in ’93, but I went to a few different colleges before finally ending up at Sac State, where I graduated locally. Back then, there was only one class on entrepreneurship, so there wasn’t really a full “entrepreneur” degree. Tell me about that: you took entrepreneurship, and obviously you started your own business, but how did that turn into going digital? How did you make that transition?

Gotcha. And then how did that transition to, like, the digital world? I mean, so you’ve always—I mean, you obviously have your own business. I mean, you have a number of businesses, right? We’ll talk about that here in a little bit. Like, the digital space—how did you physically get into digital? I mean, obviously, at that point, the internet was coming around. There was some cool stuff happening. It sounds like you were kind of at the forefront of that coming about.

Okay, gotcha, gotcha. I remember seeing those.

So that’s crazy. Here’s the thing: why did you join the military? It sounds like you’d just gotten out of college and were starting to build some momentum. Based on what I’m hearing, you seem like the kind of person who, if we were talking and I said, “Hey, I’m thinking about doing this,” you’d already be halfway out the door getting it done. Once you set your sights on something, nothing really stops you unless it’s some physical barrier. So how did the military fit into all of that?

So this is wild—we’ve got another odd parallel. Two days after 9/11, I tried signing up for the military. I’ll never forget it. I remember being in college, coming downstairs, seeing it on TV—everything about it. Two days later, I called a recruiter and we went through the whole questionnaire. He asked why I wanted to join, and I said, “Well, obviously 9/11 just happened, and I want to do my part.”

My family wasn’t military at all. My mom actually found out afterward and wasn’t thrilled, though she’s very pro-US—she was just worried about my safety. But when the recruiter heard I have asthma, he said they couldn’t take me. I tried to suggest, “How about we hang up, I call back, and we act like it’s a new conversation?” and he goes, “I can’t do that either.” I was like, “I know the right answers now” But obviously, that wasn’t allowed.

So that was a big moment for me emotionally, because I really wanted to go. It’s interesting that you went and served—I think that’s awesome. And thank you for your service. That’s phenomenal that you did that.

Yeah, I kind of wish I would have known where it would have gone. I mean, I think everybody has their path, and I don’t know what would have changed for me if I had taken that path, but I figured someone up there said, “Hey, we don’t want Shane in the military for whatever reason.” That’s not something I could control. I tried to do my part and get involved, but it’s awesome you were there and did yours—thank you for that.

So, let me ask: you have multiple companies and a lot of things going on. How do you manage that workload? I’m wondering if the military helped you systemize things. Have you always been someone who’s really organized? Because you’ve got a lot of projects, right? I think we all do in this weird, sick mindset of starting more and more stuff. How do you manage it all? What do you do for your workload and organization?

Yeah, I know traveling is hard—especially if you go international. When I go overseas, my calendar just goes haywire. I’m definitely not looking forward to 3 a.m. calls without knowing where people are or what’s going on. That’s always a challenge. We’re putting processes in place so I can do more of that, and let the team handle some of it.

Since you do so many different things, you must have a team, right? Or are you just a single gunslinger using a bunch of outsourced people? Because, man, you have a lot going on—and I know that’s news to you, but seriously, you’ve got no idea.

Gotcha. And that’s on the Empowered side, right? Yeah, yeah—cool. So let’s talk about content amplification, because I know that’s one of the main reasons we’re talking today. I know you just did the guide to Native Content Amplification. Did you finish that recently?

Yeah, you can’t go wrong with that. You’re always putting out great ebooks—I’ve downloaded quite a few of them myself, because the content you share is intriguing. The fact that you’re a one-person team blows my mind. I have 33 employees and still feel like I don’t have enough, so I don’t know how you manage it, but the content you produce is epic. Content amplification is huge. It’s one thing to write content, but another to actually get it out there. That’s what a lot of people miss—like having the best product in the world but not marketing it to the right audience. You can have great content, but if you’re not amplifying it, who sees it?

So, for people who can’t download your guide at the moment—maybe they’re listening in the car—what are some key points on amplification? Any good nuggets you’d share right now?

No, I don’t care about clicks. I want engagement. I want people to be engaged.

So it’s interesting, and I’m sure every other platform in the world hates you guys for that. They’d rather say, “Hey, if you were on the website for 0.2 seconds, you should be charged.” I mean, Facebook is pretty extreme. You can be anywhere on the page—people don’t even have to scroll—and they consider it a view or conversion. Their metrics can be pretty loose.

I’ll have clients who say, “Look, I got 27 conversions.” I’ll respond, “But how are sales?” because that might not really be a conversion. So that’s interesting. Beyond what I’ve already seen about some of your work, I’ll need to look more into the platform, because that’s fascinating—especially the AI aspect, only paying for engagement. That’s what we all want, right? Actual engagement.

So how does that work? I’m a content marketer, so what do I do? Is it something in the back end where I put the content up, then there’s a link, and the system detects engagement? Give me a breakdown of how that process works if I want to look into it. How does it all come together?

Huh, that’s interesting. All right, I’ll have to take a look at it. I mean, like I said, I’ve got a decent-sized team that handles a lot of our amplification, and we already use some software for it. But we should chat about this, because I’d like to see how it works in practice—that’d be awesome.

Yeah, oh, when you talk about content amplification, gotcha. Then how do you think it ties in with SEO or organic rankings? Because I want to explain to people who might not fully understand what content amplification is—how does it help beyond just getting the word out? Are there SEO benefits, or what do you see as the main advantages of the amplification you guys offer?

I mean, the fact that you get more eyeballs on it—Google wants to see traction with articles, right? So that just helps the situation if you can amplify it, especially to the right crowd. I think that’s the key to the whole thing. It’s using AI and machine learning to reach the right people. That’s the hardest part. Sure, you can send this out to 10,000 people, but are they the right people? Would I have 10,000 who might potentially be the right audience, or maybe only 500 or 1,000 who are truly the right people? The idea is really drilling down and making sure that perfect client—your perfect potential client—is seeing your content. I think it’s big.

So, if we talk about a “recipe,” it sounds like your secret recipe isn’t so secret. It’s Empowered. That’s who you’re working with, and that’s where you’re putting your content. So it’s not much of a secret anymore, I guess.

And then, tell me about the snail farmer—why don’t they have to? Just kidding. That makes sense. It’s an interesting way to look at things. We work with a company called Lumanu, and they do amplification for influencer marketing campaigns. That’s really valuable, because five or six years ago, you’d have someone just post a picture with a creatine bottle, and sales would roll in. Now it’s a different deal. How do you keep that content going? How do you add ad dollars behind it so it stays visible?

That’s really the key: you don’t necessarily have to pump out more content if you can promote the right content. It’s about finding the pieces already getting traction and then putting money behind them. And you have to have a goal. A lot of people don’t, right? They’re just producing content because it’s Tuesday at 8 a.m.—time to publish. I know I did that in the beginning. But now, with keywords and everything else, you have to be strategic about why you put out content and how you distribute it.

So, what are three software tools you can’t live without? It doesn’t have to be related to distribution—just three pieces of software you’d say, “If I didn’t have these, life would be terrible.” Any fun or exciting ones you can share?

So it’s funny—TweetDeck. I still have TweetDeck, and I still use TweetDecks. I haven’t heard “TweetDeck” in a long time. In fact, when you said “TweetDeck,” I realized that’s what I use. It’s been so long since I actually… you know, I couldn’t think of the name. So TweetDeck is absolutely something we use. Another one is SEMrush. My team’s in there all day. That’s kind of a given when it comes to SEO—keywords, cluster keywords, all that fun stuff you use for blog articles, writing them, putting keywords in there, and monitoring them. There are so many different features, and they just added some new stuff like brand mentions. I think that’s their latest angle. There might be a few issues, but in a nutshell, SEMrush is always evolving. They’ve got some good stuff going on, so it’s cool to see that you use that as well.

Yes, I know Steven and Susan over there. They do phenomenal work; they’re one of those companies. We get that same deal: brand mentions. They’re able to find more mentions than Google Alerts does for me, which is funny, because you’d think Google Alerts would catch everything. But Sumo is definitely the one that has a fuller report for me.

We do the same thing—you go check out who shared your content, who linked to it. That’s when you really get a tool that works, like what you’re saying, and how we use it as well. It’s phenomenal. Once you understand how to use it, it’s crazy how much information is out there for us as marketers. You can look at your competitors, see what’s going on, how to optimize things to make them better. Once you get a good system in place, it’s kind of fun to run with that.

Yeah. The only reason I bring up Google Alerts is that sometimes, during my presentations, if someone’s looking for a free option, I say, “The crazy part is, Google Alerts sends me maybe two a month.” And usually it’s because there’s a guy named Shane Barker who got killed—no joke—in New Zealand. So I’m getting alerts about his killer. I’m like, “What killer? This has nothing to do with me.”

So now I know more about this poor guy in New Zealand than anybody, because I get these alerts daily. But yeah, it doesn’t really work that well. Use Mentioned.com as well, just to step back for a bit. But yeah, it’s interesting to be able to get that kind of information, because there’s so much out there. It’s nice when you can just have it sent in an email.

So, how many eBooks have you written? You’ve written a lot of them. I know there’s one called The Global Guide to Native Advertising Technology. Like, what are some others? How many? Do you even know? You’d probably have to count, but you’re over ten now, right?

And then, with each one, what’s your process for putting content together like that? I mean, everybody has their own processes. Obviously, you’ve got something good going, because you’re writing—or running—10, 11, 12 eBooks. What’s your process for doing that? How do you gather the content? How do you go about it? I mean, obviously you do a lot of research.

Yeah, that sounds like me. I like how you just slipped in that sausage analogy. So tell me about your eating habits, because I’ve looked at your Instagram. You’re a bit of a foodie like me, maybe some alcohol in there, too. Let’s chat about that a bit. I just put myself on a two-week restriction to lose a few pounds, because I’m staring at your Instagram. I’m not gonna follow you—you won’t help me lose weight.

But tell me a little bit: you look like you’re quite the cook, and you’re always coming up with cool stuff. How did that happen? I’m looking at your feed right now, and I’m drooling on my computer, which is not recommended. Are you doing all this yourself? You jump in the kitchen and make magic, or what?

There we go. I gotta be honest, man, I wish you lived closer. I mean, I’m just saying we could become best friends, seeing as we might be the only white dancers in America. Then I felt like there was a connection there. That’s awesome. Yeah, I can tell by your food, man—it looks good. I’m a… I don’t even post half the food I eat. I stopped posting photos of food and drinks because I worried people might think I had a problem—or maybe I realized I did have a problem, or a solution. Still trying to figure it out.

But I was like, no, that’s it. I was looking at something I used to put out, so there was a friend who’s got a thing like a beer ring you can put all your beers in. There was a point where I thought, I don’t think I have a problem, but I’m not sure if this is the “my ratio” of having fun and drinking beer side, like a little beer club. I owned a thing called NorCal Brews—a website for reviewing beers and such. It was fun, maybe too much fun, but definitely a good time.

So what about you? Do you like beer, whiskey, guys, scotch? What do you do? Are you an equal-opportunity drinker?

Yeah, there we go. Well, I’ll go ahead and book a flight right after this. This is awesome. I’ll come on down; we’ll have a vodka drinking contest or something. We’re gonna finish up this podcast soon, so tell us something: what do you dislike about being a marketer? Obviously, there’s a lot of fun stuff. Actually, tell us what you like and dislike. What was it when you said, “Hey, listen, there’s something I want to change about being a marketer or about the industry—what would that be?”

Yeah, I’m with you on that. It’s funny—my schedule used to be somewhat under control back in the day, but really, I was terrible, working 20 hours a day. It was a nightmare, all gas, no brakes. Recently, I moved my schedule so I don’t do anything before 9 a.m. That’s my morning time. I work out, take walks, whatever I want—more “me” time. Then I’m done at five. We’ve been doing this a long time, so I’m not saying if you just started your marketing business you should only work six hours. The idea is that we have people who can help, and I realized I don’t want to be a slave to work. We’ve worked hard to get here, and now there’s a smarter way that isn’t necessarily more hours.

For instance, this weekend I barely worked. Actually, I did work two hours on Saturday morning, just to knock out some stuff, but I didn’t work at all yesterday. My wife would say it’s probably the only time this year I haven’t worked on the weekend, so she might call me out. But I’m trying to switch that up, because it’s important not to be go-go-go all the time.

With phones and technology, at first it was a blessing to respond quickly, but then you realize you’re kind of a slave to it—pings, buzzes, notifications. Phones are designed that way, to keep you engaged. Apple’s Screen Time feature is sobering. It’ll tell me I’ve spent five hours a day on my phone, and I can say, “Well, I’m a marketer,” but still, five hours is a lot. I could do other things—volunteer, cook, whatever.

Recently, I decided to start working out again. (Long story: hurt my back doing CrossFit, leg went numb, etc.) But I’d find myself sitting on the couch, scrolling Instagram for 20 minutes before eating. What am I doing? I could get up and move around. So I changed some habits. It’s interesting how being connected is both great—you can do everything from your phone—and terrible because you can’t escape it. It’s a harsh reality. Having the ability to disconnect is a real gift if you can manage it.

I’ve never been so thankful that somebody stole my phone.

Yeah, it’s funny. Over the last few years, I’ve tried to put systems in place because I remember reading a long time ago that if you don’t really have a business that can run without you, then you haven’t truly built a company. That idea stuck with me—if something happened to me, would the company keep going? I don’t want to always be in the middle of everything.

I’m passionate about what I do, but recently, we’ve been trying to pull me out of the business more so I can focus on speaking and consulting. It’s been an interesting transition because it’s my baby, and for 20 years, I’ve wanted to be in everything. But I realized the world won’t end if I don’t respond to an email on a Saturday. It’s not like I’m a brain surgeon—no one’s going to die if I wait until Monday.

Have you ever thought about hiring someone to steal your phone and then give it back for like 50 bucks? They could say, “Hey, sorry about that, Chad—your wife and kids paid me to do this. Here’s your phone back.” That might be a good way to force some time off!

Yeah, I’m with you on that. I do think it’s… I like it because I’m a very open person with anything, but I do remember a long time ago people didn’t want to tell anything. Now, everybody just puts everything online. It’s awesome that when you meet good people who are willing to share, there’s plenty of business for everyone. There’s no reason not to make it a collaborative effort.

I don’t look at anybody as a competitor, not in an ego sense, but rather there’s stuff I can learn from you, and there’s stuff you can learn from me, and there’s more power in us working together than in us competing for whatever reason. This has been awesome. I’m really glad I started this podcast so I can meet people. Maybe you and I can start a dance crew one day. We’ll see—it’ll be the two of us, ABCs. I don’t know. We’ll figure it out.

We’ll figure out what to name it. Chad, it was an absolute pleasure interviewing you today. I really appreciate you being on the podcast, and we’ve got to stay in touch.

I know you’re doing good, bud. You’re gonna be just over the hump here real soon.

All right, brother—take care. Thank you for everything. All right, buddy.