One Asset, 8 Touchpoints: Your Guide to Creating Hard-working Content That Boosts ROI

Key takeaways

• Content atomization is the strategy of breaking down large, high-value content into smaller content pieces or “atoms” that you can publish and distribute through different channels.
• The SCALE framework is a five-step system to turn a substantial content piece into multiple touchpoints that attract leads to your business:
  • S – Strategize: Identify your objectives and priority channels
  • C – Create: Break down content into multiple formats
  • A – Audit: Check for SEO hygiene and content quality
  • L – Launch: Distribute and adapt your content atoms for each platform
  • E – Evaluate: Track and analyze your performance

You’ve invested hours creating quality content for your business. You share it on social media and send it to your newsletter list.

You wait for the leads to roll in but only see a modest trickle. So now you wonder: Is there a better way to maximize my content marketing investment?

The answer is yes! Your content can work as hard as you. Instead of creating new content from scratch every day, successful small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) use content atomization to improve their content’s reach and generate more leads for their business.

Content atomization refers to breaking down large, high-value content (such as original research, white papers, or webinars) into smaller pieces or “atoms” that you can distribute through different channels.

Learn how you can implement this strategy and turn your high-value content into multiple touchpoints that drive leads with these topics:

• Why content atomization matters to SMBs
• The SCALE framework: Your step-by-step atomization system
• 12-week implementation checklist
• When you should not atomize (and what to do instead)

Why content atomization matters to SMBs

Content marketing is three times more efficient at generating leads than outbound marketing. However, here’s what typically happens: SMBs create new content, share it on a few channels, and repeat the process with new content.

Meanwhile, they’re competing against bigger companies with dedicated content teams that maintain their market presence with content everywhere. The traditional advice to just keep creating content is an inefficient approach that can stretch your team thin.

Content atomization helps you work smarter, not harder. Instead of always churning fresh content, you maximize the value of what you’ve already created.

With content atomization, you:

• Create four to eight touchpoints: Break down one well-researched blog post into multiple assets, such as infographics, a downloadable checklist, social media posts, and short-form video. That way, you’re giving your prospects more ways to discover your business.
• Serve different content preferences: No matter how much effort you put into an original research piece, the truth is that not all your prospects like reading long-form content. Content atomization generates various content pieces for you, potentially attracting audiences with different content preferences.
• Make proven content work harder: Instead of one whitepaper generating leads, you have videos and blog posts that create more opportunities to engage your prospects.

Think of content atomization as a cook who takes one roast chicken dinner and turns it into soups, sandwiches, and salad for the rest of the week.

Content atomization works smartly like this cook. It takes your existing content and amplifies its reach without drastically increasing your workload. As a result, you get improved ROI from every hour you’ve invested in creating content.

Create multiple lead-generating touchpoints with the SCALE framework

Here’s your five-step framework to systematically turn a content piece into multiple touchpoints that attract leads to your business:

Strategize: Identify your objectives and priority channels

Start by defining what you want your content to achieve. Then identify your highest-impact distribution channels that can deliver the results.

The goal of atomization is not to be everything, everywhere, all at once. Focus your efforts on high-value “atoms” or content and the top-performing channels that will deliver the maximum ROI.

Special note for regulated industries like healthcare, finance, and legal: Businesses in these sectors may need to consult their subject-matter experts and legal teams to approve their atomized content to ensure they’re accurate and compliant with disclosure, privacy, and other rules.

Your strategy checklist

Define your primary goal for atomization

Do you want your bite-sized content pieces to generate leads, improve your brand awareness, or support your sales teams? Determine the goal you’re working towards to set clear expectations.

Identify three to four channels where your audience is highly engaged

Which channels do your prospects use regularly to interact with you?

Use analytics tools like Google Analytics 4 to identify your best-performing channels. Pick platforms that not only drove site visitors, but also conversions.

LinkedIn is a common channel among B2B businesses, because over 60 million of the platform users are decision-makers for their companies. Email is also another popular B2B channel, with 50% of US B2B marketers claiming that email marketing is their most effective channel.

Set realistic targets

Use your current content performance as a baseline and target a two to three times improvement of your pillar content and its “atom” content.

For example, if your blog post typically generates two leads, aim for four to six leads across all your atomized pieces combined.

Choose your pillar content piece(s)

Select existing content that has performed well (in terms of engagement and generating leads), or addressing your customers’ biggest pain points.

Use the content atomization readiness criteria checklist below to evaluate your content and prioritize pieces based on performance and strategic performance.

Content atomization readiness criteria

Before atomizing a particular content piece, ensure it meets these criteria:

• Contains at least three to four unique insights, tips, or data points that can stand alone as a valuable blog post, infographic, or short-form video
• Addresses a customer pain point that they consult you about often
• Has generated leads or engaged your audience in the past
• Provides genuine value by educating, solving problems, or offering actionable advice to your ideal customers
• Is substantial enough (typically at least 800-word written content or original research) to break into meaningful, useful content pieces

Create: Break down content into multiple formats

Break your pillar content into smaller, valuable content pieces that cater to your prospects with different consumption preferences. Each content piece must be helpful for your prospects on its own — it must be meaty and free from fluffy extenders.

Your checklist for creating “atoms”

Audit: Check for SEO hygiene and content quality

When planning your “atoms” or new pieces of content, ensure that each piece is helpful for your audience and provides a unique value in your content roster.

Your atomized content must complement — and not compete with — your pillar content in search results. It must also never hurt your other marketing efforts.

Your audit checklist

Launch: Distribute and adapt your content atoms for each platform

After creating your atomized content pieces, it’s time to distribute them strategically across your most impactful channels, with each piece customized to match the platform’s format and audience behavior. This step is about smart distribution timing and optimizing content according to channels.

Your launch checklist

Evaluate: Track and analyze your performance

The final step of our framework is monitoring and evaluating your atomization approach’s performance and ROI. Unlike typical content performance analysis, you must:

• Measure the collective impact of related atomized pieces
• Evaluate whether your entire process improves efficiency and ROI

Analyze your performance 30 days after distributing your final atomized content piece. This gives your content time to gain traction and provides enough data for evaluation.

Your checklist for evaluating your content atomization process

Implementing content atomization in 12 weeks [checklist]

Getting started with content atomization can be overwhelming, especially if you’re busy running a business or staying on top of your overall marketing efforts.

This implementation checklist breaks down the SCALE framework into phases so you have time to learn, implement, and optimize your processes without doing everything all at once.

On your first atomization cycle, remember that the goal isn’t perfection. It’s to learn how to make content atomization work for you and our audience. This 12-week plan helps you discover which formats and channels deliver the best ROI, then optimize your process for maximum results.

Content Atomization Checklist

When you should not atomize (and what to do instead)

While content atomization can potentially improve your ROI and save you time, this strategy is not applicable to all content types and certainly not to all businesses. After all, every company has unique needs and goals!

Content atomization works best for businesses that can create educational content or original research and are flexible enough to experiment with different formats. If this scenario doesn’t sound like yours, hold off on atomization.

The list below can help you evaluate whether your business should not atomize content:

1. Your business must focus on your current operations
2. Your business must focus on creating real-time content over evergreen content
3. Your atomized content’s review process is time-consuming
4. Your content doesn’t meet the atomization readiness criteria
5. Your organization’s content creation strategy isn’t connected to business goals

Let’s go through each one:

1. Your business must focus on your current operations

Content atomization can work for businesses of all sizes. SMBs with smaller teams will especially benefit from this strategy.

However, if your business currently needs to focus on operational tasks or more urgent business challenges, address your immediate operational concerns first before atomization.

What you can do instead: Focus on your more urgent operational and business development tasks. Once you’ve stabilized your core business operations and have breathing room to create even just one long-form content, atomize it to maximize its impact.

2. Your business must focus on creating real-time content over evergreen content

While most businesses could create evergreen content, some need to prioritize real-time content because of their business model, so they have limited resources to atomize.

What you can do instead: Develop content creation systems with templates for your real-time pieces. Prioritize speed and relevance, which are key to staying competitive. Consider content atomization only during slower periods and have enough time and resources.

3. Your atomized content’s review process is time-consuming

Businesses in heavily regulated industries typically have long content approval processes. Legal teams and busy subject-matter experts have their plates full — reviewing multiple atomized pieces on top of their other tasks can overwhelm them.

If their content approval consistently takes longer than creating new content, atomization may not work for your business.

What you can do instead: Create fewer, higher-impact but helpful pieces that justify the lengthy approval process.

4. Your content doesn’t meet the atomization readiness criteria

Content atomization can only amplify your reach and boost conversions if your pillar content is rich in insights, original data, or unique perspectives.

If it only provides surface-level information and lacks expert insights, breaking it apart won’t create stronger assets — you’ll just have more pieces of weak content.

What to do instead: Invest time in creating a high-value, helpful content piece first. Focus on in-depth pieces with at least three to four unique insights, tips, or data points that you can break into multiple content pieces.

5. Your organization’s content creation strategy isn’t connected to business goals

Some organizations are focused on other aspects of running their business that content is just an afterthought. They may be creating content without strategic direction, clear objectives, or aligning it with business goals.

Without a clear strategy and business alignment, content performance is difficult to measure. You can’t tell which content pieces are performing well and driving leads. You only have a vague idea of topics that resonate with your audience.

What to do instead: Establish clear content objectives and performance criteria. Define your ideal customer profile, too. Then, create a content strategy that’s aligned with your business goals. Once you have a content strategy that aligns with your business goals, you can create educational content and apply the SCALE framework to maximize its impact.

Amplify your content’s impact on your ROI

You now have the SCALE framework to turn one comprehensive content piece into multiple strategic touchpoints to reach your audience across multiple channels. Instead of constantly creating content from scratch, you’re making your content work harder for you, bringing measurable ROI improvements.

If you need experts to help you, consider teaming up with WebFX. We’re a full-service digital marketing agency that has helped our clients generate $10 billion in revenue.

We’d also love to drive bottom-line growth for your business with content marketing and other strategies that suit your needs.

Let’s amplify your content’s power. Contact us online or call us at 888-601-5359 to get started!