A Blow Up Feature

What’s going to make a feature “blow up” is a weird mixture of science and magic. These days, we all want our content to be seen and clicked on by as many people as possible and at the Telegraph we  have a new ‘Amplify’ team to help make that happen.

But sometimes you just can’t tell: for example last week my magazine ran a feature on pronatalists in the US who believe having many children is a philanthropic act. Niche, but the stars aligned – the main couple featured looked quirky and fascinating in their photograph, the story itself was of interest to many more people than I might have imagined and the headline “Meet the elite couples breeding to save mankind” grabbed attention. In fact, it became a meme (the dream) and on social media it went around the world.

That was unusual, more magic than science, but it focuses the mind on amplification. That’s where working with publicists and PRs really comes in – I never thought I’d be so into the idea of collaborative Instagram posts and making special cards to share for Twitter and Facebook etc. 

It gives you more equity in editorial than you might have previously had, which is worth exploring/exploiting. If your client has a big following, conversations around headlines, picture choices and more become more collaborative.

(It can go wrong: I headline tested a feature recently with a very client-friendly quote and one less benign but more intriguing for a product I didn’t think many of the audience would  have heard of. The latter won and although the PR I was working with understood the context, I was disinvited from the launch. I’ll live!)