How to Leverage Content Atomization for Marketing Success

What is content atomization?

Content atomization is a process that breaks down a piece of content into smaller components that can be used across your marketing strategy and on different marketing channels.

A good content atomization example would be taking a theme introduced in a blog post and turning it into a YouTube video which you can then use in your email marketing campaigns and on social media.

Ultimately, you can take just about any content and break it into smaller pieces. For instance, a comprehensive blog post covering several subtopics can be broken down into another post or several different posts.

Content atomization sounds a lot like content repurposing because it allows you to take existing content and turn it into something else.

However, content repurposing allows you to take a single piece of content and repurpose it using a different format. For instance, you can turn a blog into an informative YouTube video or infographic.

On the other hand, content atomization involves taking a large piece of content like an e-guide or white paper and creating new content from it for a guest blog post, social media post, graphic, or video.

Benefits of content atomization

So, what are the benefits of content atomization?

Ultimately, content atomization helps you more effectively use and create content to generate brand awareness and attract new customers. But the advantages don't stop just there.

Some of the other benefits of content atomization include:

Expands reach and visibility

Content atomization can expand your reach and visibility online by allowing you to create more content quickly and use various marketing channels to distribute it.

For instance, a blog series can serve as inspiration for an infographic or video, which can then be shared via email marketing or social media.

Increases audience engagement

Content atomization can increase audience engagement through different mediums and formats.

For instance, some website visitors may be more attracted to a video than a blog on any given day of the week, which increases engagement in the same topics without necessarily creating entirely new content.

Additionally, atomization allows you to explore broad topics in greater depth, breaking comprehensive concepts into smaller chunks to make them more digestible to visitors and hyper-focused on relevant topics.

Boosts SEO

Content atomization can improve your SEO efforts by enabling you to post content across different marketing channels and explore topics more in-depth.

For instance, if you write an e-guide about e-commerce logistics and touch upon topics like reverse logistics or the post-purchase experience, you can create more in-depth blogs on those topics to take advantage of new keywords and search queries.

Builds authority

Content atomization can help your business build authority and become a trusted resource on a topic. Creating content centered around a single topic allows you to explore it more in-depth, making you seem more knowledgeable than the competition.

Improves efficiency

Content atomization is an efficient way to create content because it allows you to spread ideas out into more digestible pieces.

In addition, when you atomize your content, you don't need as many topics to focus on, which can help you create several social media posts or shorter blog posts from a single topic.

How to include content atomization into your marketing strategy

Before you begin going through your blog to find pieces of content to atomize, you should have a strategy in place. Content atomization can improve your content strategy, but it must be done properly and help your business reach its goals.

Here are the steps you should follow when implementing a content atomization strategy:

Define your marketing goals

Every strategy requires marketing goals to help you measure campaign performance and success.

Consider the reason why you have a blog. Most companies have blogs to increase brand awareness around certain topics and their products, services, and brands. Your content atomization strategy should have similar goals attached to it to help you determine whether atomization is an effective tactic for reaching new customers.

Identify the core content

Every content atomization strategy relies on core content, which is a more comprehensive piece of content that can be broken into smaller pieces. You can develop new core pieces of content or review your existing content to see if any of them might work.

For instance, an e-commerce fulfillment service provider may create content about e-commerce logistics. If you don't have existing content to work with, you can develop an entirely new content strategy from scratch and create multiple posts from it.

A longer blog post should touch on topics you want to explore in depth but don't necessarily have the space for. An e-guide about e-commerce logistics might touch on reverse logistics but not necessarily get into all the details consumers might want to know about.

Determine the format

The best format for the topic will ultimately depend on your target audience and resources.

A comprehensive infographic may not be the best option for your business if you don't have a graphic designer available. However, if you have a writer, you can break down larger core topics into small subtopics by using blogs or social media posts.

When identifying the core content and subtopics, you can make a list next to each subtopic with ideas for format ideas, which can help you allocate resources when you begin implementing the plan.

Adapt content for different platforms

Remember, you share different types of content on different platforms. Starting with your core content, you should make a note of any themes or topics you can explore later on and create small chunks of content.

Then, you should optimize each piece based on the platform. You can optimize content for blogs, social media posts, emails, and even text message marketing.

Publish your content

How you publish your content will depend on where you're sharing it.

If you created a shorter blog from an e-book, you can publish your blog like any other piece of content on your website. But you can also schedule social media posts, e-blasts, newsletters, and blogs at certain times using marketing automation.

For example, if you know a user reads your core content, you can send them an email notification when you publish your atomized content to help bring them back to your website to learn more about a particular topic in depth.

Measure performance

Measuring the performance of your content can help you determine which topics and channels are the most effective.

You might find that some types of content perform better on social media than others. A complicated topic that requires a thorough explanation probably wouldn't be a good social media post, but an infographic might be.

Measuring your content's performance can help you determine whether you need to make changes to your strategy and find the most relevant topics for your audience to help you create more targeted and personalized content throughout your content strategy.

Best practices for content atomization

Content atomization is the simple process of breaking down large pieces of content into smaller chunks and finding the right way to share that content without necessarily having to brainstorm new content ideas every day.

Here are a few best practices to help you get started:

• Research your audience: Understanding the information your audience is interested in can help you develop more in-depth core and sub-topics that attract website visitors.
• Maintain consistency in brand messaging: Regardless of where you share your content, you should maintain brand consistency. Therefore, a post on social media should use the same voice and graphics you find on your website.
• Tailor your content formats for different channels: Always tailor your content for different formats and channels. For instance, you can repurpose a recent blog post for social media to optimize posts more effectively.
• Track and measure the performance of your content: Atomized content can help you explore topics more in-depth, but you must ensure those topics interest your target audience. Measuring the performance of your atomized content can help you determine if you're choosing the right topics and targeting the right keywords.

Maximize the impact of your marketing strategy with content atomization

Content atomization can enhance your content marketing efforts by helping you explore related topics more in-depth to attract new customers using organic search, social media, and email marketing tactics. You can also use atomization with content repurposing to amplify your overarching marketing strategy without regularly creating new content.

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