Creating virality for your small business with Amplifier Networks

Don't you love getting word of mouth for your business? If only you could drive more of it. When we talk about virality, we often mean a social media post that gets wide visibility, but virality isn't just for social and it's not just for apps. Virality is the principle that everyone in your audience has the power to attract and convert many more.

It goes way beyond your clients. To your partners, your referers, your supporters, and your fans, everyone in your orbit can be spreading the word about you and your business. In today's episode, I'm gonna share a technique creators have used called engagement groups, but we're going way beyond. Social media engagement Groups have typically been used for likes, comments, and shares.

But I'm gonna show you how to pair it with your referral strategy, forming something I'm calling an Amplifier network. In today's episode, we'll look at how to create your own amplifier network without becoming that spammy friend who's chasing likes all the time. I'm Lex Roman, and this is The Low Energy Leads Show.

Before we get into what an amplifier network is, I wanna level set on what an Instagram pod or engagement group is. So if you're not familiar with these, this trend has been around for a few years now. The idea is basically that in order to trick the algorithm into thinking that your content is worthwhile, you create a group of people who will like, comment, and share on that content so that you can get seen.

Because as we know, the faster people interact, the faster the algorithm reacts to recognize that your content is worth getting seen. So if you create a group of people of other business owners on any social media network, and you go in and you like, comment, and share on each other's posts, Then your post will get more visibility and theoretically you'll get more followers, you'll get more engagement.

Your post will get more likes, which means that they will generally get seen more frequently. The way that this works mechanically is usually through some kind of private group chat, so a DM group within that platform or a text messaging group. Of the people that are in the engagement pod, and then a post will get shared and then you're supposed to like, or comment or share it so that it gets seen by more people.

So you can see here just an example of that, um, on LinkedIn, people reacting to the post really quickly after it was posted to boost it within the feed. Now this can get really tiring. I've been in several engagement pods and it's exhausting every day to get people's posts. All day long with the expectation that you engage with them, especially if that content isn't super relevant to you.

And I think that when this idea launched, when, when the first engagement pod was created, It was maybe really novel, but now it's a little bit saturated. People just do it for likes and comments and it, it just gets really tiring. I think we can do way better than engagement pods. We, we don't wanna tire out your friends.

We don't wanna tire out fellow business owners. That's not gonna help you actually get to the goals that you want. And along with that, sales are better than likes. So engagement pods are really geared towards likes, which in some cases will lead to followers. And then eventually maybe lead to sales. But we really wanna get to your goal, which is sales.

You can actually short circuit that. You don't necessarily have to play the likes and followers game. And as I mentioned, you can make this much bigger than social media, even if you're not on social at all. You can use this principle of engagement groups or Instagram pods in whatever medium you're working in.

We're gonna do much better than the engagement pod. We're gonna focus on something much more interesting when it comes to amplifier networks. There's three reasons why that's more interesting than engagement pods. One is real relationships. You develop actual relationships with related business owners, related entrepreneurs.

The second is that you get more meaningful interactions. Rather than getting a, like a comment, a share every day from the same group of people, you can get something more substantial, an actual testimonial, an actual highlight in their newsletter, an actual collaboration of some kind. So you have fewer interactions.

But they're more meaningful. They go farther. They build that, no, like trust more than someone liking your post. And then of course, actual sales is way more interesting than likes. So we really wanna focus on the goal. The goal is sales, not likes. This is where Amplifier Networks comes in. So we shift our lens from social media engagement to.

Amplifying each other's work. How do we do that? Here's your recipe. The first thing you need to do is find related business owners. These are business owners generally who serve your same audience in a different way. The second thing we wanna do is create a way for you to communicate with each other. So this might look like a group text group, it might be a social media DM group.

It might be inside a community. You need a way to communicate about the work that you're doing. So that you can stay in touch about what you're trying to amplify. And then lastly, you've gotta amplify each other. You can do this in several ways, and I'm gonna cover a few a little bit later in this episode.

Let's dive into each of these three steps so you can create your own amplification group. Step one, you wanna find related business owners. So this is you here at the center. These are your business friends. Rather than just add whoever is on social media into your group, I really want you to think about.

Who do you want to have closer relationships with? So this is where your referral network comes into play. If you have business owners who are already sending work your way, they are a natural ask for your amplifier group. Are you in a community that you're really active in? Those folks might be great to create an amplifier network with.

So you really wanna think about who is your business support system, not just who can like my post. But who do we have mutual goals? Do we have mutual audiences where we can share in each other's success? Think about who these folks are. Again, we're going for quality of relationship here rather than count.

We're not looking for likes, we're looking for meaningful interactions. So build your amplifier network in a way that you can sustain it with a small set of wonderful supporters. The next thing you wanna do is create that way to communicate. Group chat is an easy one. You can also create an email listserv using something like Google Groups.

If you're in a community or a forum, that can be a great way to keep in touch. Slack works for this circle. Mighty Networks, even a Facebook group can be a way for you to stay in touch about what each of you is promoting and how you can support each other. And then lastly, some business owners like to do weekly accountability meetings If you have something like this in your practice.

Turning that into an amplifier network is a natural next step. So, because this isn't an engagement pod where you're getting hit up every, every day with posts, you can bring those things up in the weekly meeting. What are the ways you wanna be supported and amplified? Bring those up in your weekly meetings so that other business owners can share your work.

Let's talk about some different ways that you can be amplifying each other, especially beyond social media. I have six ways here, though. There are so many ways. That you can amplify each other. I really want you to think expansively about the combination of where you show up online, your visibility and your referrals, how people talk about you.

When you unite those things, they become so much more powerful than likes, comments, and shares. The first way people can amplify each other is in person or one-on-one. So this is where your referral program really comes into play. If everyone in your amplifier network is clear on what you're promoting, they can take it out to your audience.

So whether they're having a one-on-one sales conversation, a coffee chat, they're networking, they can share what you're doing. In those conversations. The second way is a newsletter swap, and so what you're doing here is you're featuring your partner, they're featuring you. This doesn't necessarily have to be tit for tat if you're in an amplifier group, but this is another valuable place where you could be showing up for each other.

Newsletters tend to come out less frequently than social media posts, so it's a more special highlight of your work. This is a great way to highlight a partner who has an upcoming launch, a big program, something that they're really promoting. And if you can do this for each other, you'll grow your audiences together way faster than you can do on your own.

The third way is social with actual comments. So when you're not so focused on getting likes and comments on every post, you can instead. Incentivize or ask for shares on a specific post. And what you wanna do is really get a testimonial from your partners. So you're gonna wanna use this sparingly for your most important promotions, and you can ask for something specific, particularly if people have been involved in this effort.

Ask them, prompt them with a specific question. Prompt them with a specific hesitation you know people have, and ask them to re-share it with a comment. The more work you do here, the easier you make it on your partners. But these posts when your partners actually write their own sentiments here are way more interesting than the likes and comments you're getting on your own feed.

The fourth way is inside communities. This is a platform here called Product Hunt, and these are the comments on Dan Mall's recent launch of Design System University. So all these folks know Dan from different communities and are amplifying him inside Product Hunt, which is a really targeted place for him to find his members.

What I love about this is that a lot of times people will pop in and out of communities just dropping in when they have something to promote, and then their post falls flat because no one has a relationship to them or the thing that they're promoting. When you build an amplifier network that's relevant to your audience, where those business owners know your audience and can show up in those communities, those posts can actually get seen.

So inside communities can be a really targeted way to leverage your amplifier network over likes and comments on general social platforms. The fifth way you can amplify each other is through content collaboration. So you can ask your amplification network if they want to do YouTube episodes with you, if they wanna record podcasts with you, if they wanna do press pitches or conference talks together.

Collaborating with each other to actually create something is a way more meaningful way to boost your partner than just sharing a post that they've created. And lastly, co-hosting events. Whether you do events online or in person, this is a great way to boost up your partner network. Events are incredibly shareable, right?

Just like content. Those are two things that are really easy for your amplifier network to share on your behalf with their audience. So whether or not you co-create those things together, or you ask them to share those things, you really wanna reserve those. Amplify requests for things that are gonna drive meaningful results in your business.

Subscribes, registrations, purchases, actually getting people to do the things that you want them to do in your business. Rather than having people just like a bunch of posts, really focusing your efforts on the things that are actually gonna drive towards your goals. When you create an amplifier network and you use that group sparingly to promote the things that really matter, in ways that will actually matter and means something to your audience, you're getting way farther along with your buyers than you are by just building a follower count.

On a social media platform, I really encourage you to think about Amplifier networks as an expansion of engagement pods and as something that can be not only a way to reach your buyers, but a way to deepen your business relationships with your partners and your refers. Amplifier networks are an expansive idea that really encourage you to stop spamming everyone for likes, and instead think about how you can build collaborative visibility with other entrepreneurs.

Do you have an amplifier network? Are you considering starting one? I'd love to hear how you're thinking about this. Leave me a voicemail at lowenergyleads.com. You can also take charge of your lead generation every week with the Low Energy Leads Newsletter, where I share tips on staying booked with less energy.

And if you're experimenting with your best ways to find clients, you should consider becoming a growth Tracker. Growth Trackers is my membership for people that are finding their stay booked formula. Learn more at supereasydigital.com/growthtrackers.

Until next time, remember to protect your energy for what's most valuable to you.