As viewers increasingly tune out ads and Internet users become immune to banners and buttons, today’s savvy marketers are turning to content marketing to help drive consumer engagement and, in turn, sales. And with the shift from traditional advertising to more indirect forms of informing and engaging with customers, comes the need to create compelling content at all costs. Enter Atomic Reach.

1. CASE STUDY
Content Optimization Leader, Atomic Reach, Generates Compelling Results for
High-Profile Clients
INTRODUCTION
According to the Content Marketing Institute, “content marketing is a marketing technique of creating and
distributing relevant and valuable content to attract, acquire, and engage a clearly defined and understood target
audience – with the objective of driving profitable customer action.”1
As viewers increasingly tune out ads and Internet users become immune to banners and buttons, today’s savvy
marketers are turning to content marketing to help drive consumer engagement and, in turn, sales. And with the
shift from traditional advertising to more indirect forms of informing and engaging with customers, comes the need
to create compelling content at all costs.
SITUATION
Enter Atomic Reach.
Atomic Reached launched in 2011 to help brands and content publishers connect and drive revenue through its
community collaboration tools. At the time, brands needed a way of producing relevant, engaging content and
bloggers were looking for new ways to connect with new audiences.
1
Retrieved November 12, 2013 from http://contentmarketinginstitute.com/what-is-content-marketing/
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2. As its client base grew and results were generated, Atomic Reach’s founder, Bradley Silver, realized that producing
relevant content was at the heart of it all.
In our work connecting brands and content publishers, we realized that high quality content was the key to success. As
a result, we set out to develop a content scoring engine – an evolution of our original Atomic Reach platform – to unlock
critical insights for content creators in the pre-amplification, pre-publication stage to maximize audience engagement.
– Bradley Silver, CEO, Atomic Reach
On August 29, 2013, Atomic Reach launched a revolutionary platform to give publishers, brands and bloggers tools
to perfect content before it gets published.
HOW IT WORKS
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3. Atomic Reach’s proprietary technology leverages a series of measures that analyze structural and linguistic content
attributes – from paragraph density to originality to sophistication – to assess quality, audience relevance and
performance potential, helping content creators improve content, profitability and engagement in real-time.
Its pre-amplification optimization engine analyzes content based on performance potential and relevance for its
intended audience by:

Producing pre-amplification insights to optimize content performance before it gets published to the world

Identifying content strength and critical opportunities for improvement

Matching content with customer knowledge and topic comprehension levels, unlocking its full potential to
maximize audience engagement
CLIENT IMPACT
Since launch, top brands, bloggers and publishers have taken notice including a leading publisher of entertainment
news, a global technology solution provider and a world class medical center to name a few. Here is a recap of
some of the results.
For the purpose of this case study, we will be referring to our clients as A, B and C to protect their proprietary,
confidential information.
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4. CLIENT A
Client A, a leading publisher of entertainment news, is always looking for ways to produce better content and
connect with new readers. The organization publishes hundreds of articles every month and employs hundreds of
writers. With so much content produced on a daily basis – from a diverse team of writers – Client A was looking for
a tool to help it better define “good” content and better determine what is and isn’t sticking with its readers. Over
several weeks, Atomic Reach worked with Client A to review its content to find ways of improving it in order to
increase user engagement.
What We Discovered
Write at your audience’s sophistication level

Articles that were written at the right audience sophistication level – “knowledgeable” in the case of Client A –
generated 93% more engagement than articles written at all other sophistication levels
Generate a higher score to improve potential engagement


Articles that generated an AtomicScore of 60 or higher – based on Atomic Reach’s series of content attribute
measures – generated 27% more engagement
Only 42% of Client A’s content had scores above 60
Focus on the ideal length for your audience


Only 18% of Client A’s content was at an “ideal length”
Content written at an “ideal length” had 72% more engagement than articles that were too short and 158%
more engagement than those written too long
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5. 1%
18%
Ideal Length
Too Short
Too Long
81%
Final Thought
After reviewing Client A’s site, we concluded that 49% of its content was not written for its intended audience. We
advised Client A to focus its content on a better suited sophistication band – “knowledgeable” in this case – to
improve audience engagement. We also worked with Client A to help improve its overall AtomicScore which will
help amplify user engagement.
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6. CLIENT B
Client B, a global technology solution provider, wants to increase engagement with its website visitors. The
organization has set out a company-wide goal of improving content quality and was also looking to develop more
consistency throughout the organization in terms of its content. As a result, it partnered with Atomic Reach in order
to gain critical insights into how its content is being consumed, how it can improve user engagement and how it can
create consistency across the board.
What We Discovered
Write at your audience’s sophistication level

Articles that were written at an “academic” audience sophistication level drove the most social media
engagement; Client B had been writing at a "specialist" audience sophistication level
Generate a higher score to improve potential engagement


Articles that generated an AtomicScore of 70 or higher generated 25% more engagement than articles below
70; in Client B’s case we set its AtomicScore bar at 70 – higher than our traditional bar of 60 – given the nature
of its sophisticated audience
A total of 78% of Client B’s content scored below 70
Focus on the ideal length for your audience


Only 25% of Client B’s content was written at an “ideal length”
Content written at an “ideal length” generated 35% more engagement on LinkedIn and 48% more
engagement on Twitter than articles that were too short
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7. Final Thought
Many of Client B’s articles had low scores based on structural content issues. We concluded that optimizing future
articles – on various AtomicScore factors – will improve audience interaction. We also identified that high
AtomicScores paired with audience match are key factors for audience engagement and recommended that Client
B increase article sophistication as content with the highest engagement was written for an Academic audience.
LinkedIn and Twitter content engagement was 64% and 27% higher, respectively, with “academic” level articles
versus content written at a “specialist” sophistication level.
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8. CLIENT C
Client C, a world class medical center, has no shortage of content on its website, from whitepapers and research
findings to information about surgical techniques and health/fitness tips. The center already had a steady flow of
visitors coming to its website but was looking for ways of pushing out its content. In addition, it was seeking advice
on content optimization – including what to post and when as well as where content would get the most
engagement.
What We Discovered
Write at your audience’s sophistication level



Client C has a variety of different audiences that consume and share content differently with “knowledgeable”
and “specialist” audiences being the largest
Articles targeted at a “knowledgeable” audience received the most engagement on Facebook and as content
became more sophisticated, we found that Twitter became less relevant
Conversely, LinkedIn became a much more relevant tool as content became more sophisticated
Generate a higher score to improve potential engagement

Articles that generated an AtomicScore of 60 or higher generated 79% more comment engagement than
articles below 60 but we discovered that only 43% of their content was above our 60 threshold
Focus on the ideal length for your audience

Content written at an “ideal length” had 55% more engagement than articles that were too short but only
33% of their content was at the ideal length
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9. Final Thought
As is the case with all clients, two important pillars ring true for producing high quality content – a high AtomicScore
and a match in audience sophistication. We instructed Client C to improve its content based on our AtomicScore
guidelines.
Unlike other clients, where we typically recommend targeting one band of sophistication, we recommended that
Client C continue to write for two bands while paying particular attention to the target social media outlet.
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10. SUMMARY
The abovementioned clients are now working with Atomic Reach to fit its pre-amplification scoring tool seamlessly
into their workflow, resulting in higher audience engagement with their content.
In summary we found that through our analysis, content that scored over 60 or higher – or 70 in Client B’s case –
and content that was written at the right sophistication level had an overall 63% more engagement than content
that did not meet these criteria.
Atomic Reach’s content optimization engine has provided Clients A, B and C with critical insights to which they
previously had little access which, in turn, will help increase audience engagement with their content exponentially.
UP NEXT?
Atomic Reach’s vision is to become the industry standard for online content optimization across all media including
text, images and video. Video and image analysis, both increasingly important for brands and publishers, are the
next algorithms on the agenda. In addition, analysis of emotional content  how emotions trigger engagement 
and social media content  how to make messages effective  are around the corner.
Atomic Reach is redefining the way content creators interact with their target audiences and is on track to become
the leading pre-amplification tool for all major publishers and brands in the future.
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