Thinking small in content marketing

This is typical:  you expend a lot of energy into a chunky piece of marketing content – then retire it, move on and start working on the next piece.  When you do that, not only are you leaving a lot of content value behind, but wasting a real opportunity to get more bang for just a little more work.

“Atomising” is a term coined by Todd Defren in 2008 to mean “sharing content in small bits.”

Breaking your content down into smaller, more consumable pieces is not only more appetising to your already-to-busy customer base, but will feed your business’ content pipeline and increase overall impact.

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We have to disavow ourselves of the natural inclination towards a “bigger is better” mentality, and here’s some excellent reasons why:

 5 reasons to atomise your big idea

       1. Atomised content is more searchable

Breaking your content up into snack-able portions puts more bait in the water to attract your most important customer – Google.  Producing disparate pieces of content gives you the opportunity to highlight a wider number of search terms, cross-link your content and increase your total number of ranked pages.

       2. Atomised content is more findable

This is especially true when you repurpose your content and atomise it.  Think about it; what will get more exposure for your company?  A blog post, or a blog post plus a Slideshare presentation?  Every presentation you make should also be able to be found as a blog post.  And every blog post you write has untapped potential to become a presentation!

       3. Atomised content gets consumed more

In a social media dominated world, where 140 characters equals a fully-formed thought, what is going to get consumed more? A 90-second video or a 25-page ebook?  Social media and content marketing trends are shifting toward brevity anda “show me, don’t tell me” mentality.

       4. Atomised content gets spread more

The potential for small content to go viral supersedes large content in almost every case.  And it’s easy to see why.  We are far more likely to recommend or share something that we have actually read.  But it’s also a case of simple maths – if you have a fantastic ebook, it’s going to get shared, but if you break that same ebook up into episodic sections, the collective shares for those components will be higher.

       5. Atomised content generates more leads

Thinking small in content marketing gives you more opportunities to include CTAs.  For instance, a 5-piece series gives you 500% more calls-to-action than one giant volume of work.  Additionally, the smaller your content, the fewer words, pictures and other content elements compete against your CTAs, which could provide additional attention and conversions.

The next time you are brainstorming a content execution for your brand, think about how you can take that idea and turn it into two, or four, and so on.  That’s thinking small.

Want to find out more about how you can optimise your content marketing strategy?  Get in touch.  Talk to Marketing Director, Steve Ballantyne:  steve@b2bpartners.nz