Expand Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy Reach with Content Atomization

Imagine you’ve just created an outstanding eBook that breaks down the hottest topic in your industry, and now you’re ready to roll out an entire digital content marketing strategy behind it. You’ve invested a ton of time, energy, and money producing this asset, so you have much riding on its success.

Unfortunately, you forgot that basing your entire campaign around a single asset isn’t always the best way to reach your entire audience. Considering that only about 20% of marketing emails even get opened, chances are good that most people will never even know your wonderful eBook exists.

But wait, there’s good news! If you had the foresight to treat this eBook as merely one component of a content atomization strategy, you’ll know that your campaign is just getting started.

Reaching a Wider Audience with Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy

Today’s content marketers must navigate a digital landscape that features a wide variety of mediums, each with their own unique audiences and characteristics. The example above demonstrates the potential risk of focusing too heavily on only one of those mediums. That fancy eBook may be packed full of insights, but not everyone you want to reach is going to take the time to read it.

That’s not because the average person has a shorter attention span than a goldfish (an oft-repeated internet “statistic” that actually isn’t true, by the way). It’s because not everyone engages with information and media in the same way.

If you want to reach the widest audience with your digital content marketing strategy, you need to find ways to leverage multiple mediums to your advantage. That means not just creating eBooks but also infographics, videos, blog posts, social media posts, and so on.

Of course, creating all that content sounds daunting. That’s where content atomization comes in.

What Is Content Atomization, and How Does It Work?

Content atomization begins with a theme or a large piece of content and breaks it down into a series of much smaller pieces that can be distributed across multiple marketing channels. This can involve repurposing content directly, but it’s really more about creating related content that’s connected by a common theme.

By incorporating all of these smaller topics into a broader digital content marketing strategy that focuses on a common theme, you can turn what would have been a single asset that appeals to a specific audience into a multifaceted campaign that gets more engagement, traffic, and traction.

Here’s how that atomization strategy might work in practice. For some real-world context, let’s imagine your eBook is a fulfillment trends report for a supply chain company:

• Atom 1: A blog post focusing on automation technology trends covered in the eBook.
• Atom 2: A LinkedIn carousel ad highlighting a key statistic about warehouse automation followed by steps your company is taking to stay ahead of industry trends.
• Atom 3: A short video (which could be shared via social media, email, or even on a website) showcasing the ways your company is using automation technology.
• Atom 4: A podcast episode focused on automation trends.
• Atom 5: An infographic that features important data about automation trends (which are all contained in your eBook) and showcases your expertise.
• Atom 6: Social media posts consisting of snippets of content from Atoms 1-5.

Just like that, you’ve got multiple pieces of content built around a common theme that all focus on different audiences. Since everything is drawn from the same source, you’re not forcing your content team to start from scratch with each asset, which streamlines your ideation and development process.

5 Benefits of Content Atomization

Deployed over time, content atomization provides several benefits to your marketing efforts. Here are some of the most important benefits:

1. More Efficient Production

Since content atomization focuses on breaking down larger pieces of content into smaller, more manageable units, you’ll end up saving time and resources. Marketers can more easily create, edit, or update bite-sized compared to extensive articles or lengthy videos. Furthermore, leveraging your existing resources ensures that valuable content like quotes, statistics, and graphs won’t end up buried and forgotten within larger content pieces.

2. Increased Reach

Atomization allows content to be reshaped to fit a variety of platforms and channels. This not only means that the same foundational content can reach audiences on platforms they prefer or frequent the most but also that your content doesn’t have to be abandoned if it doesn’t immediately find an audience in one medium. With this approach, you can significantly amplify your brand’s share of voice, visibility, and touchpoints across the digital landscape without having to create an entirely new strategy for each channel.

3. Better SEO

Search engine optimization thrives on relevance and diversity. By atomizing content, you can tailor each piece to target specific keywords or search intent. Instead of having one long article that touches on multiple topics, you can have several shorter pieces that hone in on specific keywords. This increases the chances of ranking for a wider range of search queries, thereby boosting your website’s visibility in search engine results pages. As you build up more content around related themes and keywords, you’ll strengthen your rankings even more.

4. Improved Engagement

While it may not be true that the average attention span is only eight seconds (a reminder to content marketers to always fact-check your stats), it is true that many people prefer concise, easily digestible content that delivers value quickly. Atomized content caters to these preferences by meeting audiences where they’re most comfortable. When you provide them with relevant content that’s perfectly sized, audiences are more likely to engage, share, and interact. This can lead to higher click-through rates, increased social media shares, and overall enhanced user engagement.

5. Stronger Authority

Depth and breadth of knowledge are two key indicators of authority in any field. Through content atomization, you can showcase your expertise on a wide range of topics within your niche. By consistently delivering in-depth, valuable, and diverse content, you demonstrate to your audience that you are not just knowledgeable about one aspect of your industry but have a comprehensive understanding. Over time, this can position your brand as a go-to source of information, thereby strengthening your reputation and authority in the market.

Get More Mileage Out of Your Digital Content Marketing Strategy

Content atomization allows marketers to easily create content for multiple mediums and reach different audiences without having to start from scratch every time. By thinking about how your content can be broken down and distributed across multiple channels, you can turn nearly any piece of quality content into the centerpiece of a multifaceted digital content marketing strategy.

With Contently, you can put that strategy into action and get more value out of every piece of content you produce. Whether you’re using our content marketing platform to manage your campaigns or tapping into our creative network to keep iterating on key themes, Contently makes it easy to start atomizing your content and expanding your reach!

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