For years women have complained about being ignored – or worse, having their ideas poached, at meetings. So it’s no surprise that many of us were fascinated by a recent account of the concrete, practical solution employed by women working at the White House.
According to stories like this one , women in White House adopted a strategy of “amplification.” They agreed that whenever a woman shared a good idea or observation, the other women would repeat the idea, giving credit back to the originator.
That repetition helped the idea get noticed. (And kept men from taking credit for it.)
I’m going to amplify that idea and note that amplification is valuable to all ages, genders, organizations and companies. Everyone should be using amplification.
In a world where media audience is scattered and fragmented, few organizations can command the attention of an entire community through earned media alone. Earned media is still valuable. But being shared, clicked on, and talked about is necessary for any message to get traction. Whenever you’re getting a message out, you need to have a plan for amplifying it.
That means developing your own social media platforms and developing understandings with partner agencies, vendors, and influencers, who are quick to share, compliment, retweet, repost, and react. It means figuring out ways to push out the message more than one time, in more than one way. And thinking about visuals that will work not just for print and TV, but for your amplifiers.
A good message deserves to be heard by a lot of people. You owe it to the people you work with to make sure their good ideas are amplified.
-Beverly Bartlett
