Atomic Reach: How We're Quantifying High-Quality Content [Interview]

Published by Nicole Karlis on Wednesday, May 21, 2014

Ira Haberman fills us in on their own content marketing strategy, what qualifies as quality content and more in our latest Content Influencer Interview.

There's a lot of discussion surrounding quality content in marketing these days, especially with the changes in Google's algorithm. How exactly are companies supposed to quantify their content's quality though -- aside from looking at the usual go-to metrics? Meet Atomic Reach, a Toronto-based startup that is focused on giving brand publishers an Atomic Score to measure the quality of each article on the Internet. The score is determined by three critical factors: audience relevance, emotion and social engagement. We caught up with Ira Haberman, Director of Marketing, to find out more about their own content strategy and the intriguing Atomic Score.

See also: How to Measure the ROI of Your Blog Content

Scripted: What would you say is the highest Atomic Score you can receive? Is it 100?

Ira: Only incredible writers with incredible insight achieve that goal. I've seen low 80s, but those are people who are exceptional.

Scripted: What common traits do content with high scores share?

Ira: There are a few key things. The first one is the title. It's the first thing that draws an audience. We spend a lot of time on research around title, and we continue to perfect both our measures and our prescription.

The next is audience match. Being able to write to the level of sophistication for your audience is critical. You'll know right away whether a piece of content is appropriate for your audience. The next is emotion. Writing with emotion and sophistication equally important to writing great content.

See also: What's an Audience & Why Is It Important?

Scripted: There's been a lot talk about this content shock lately. I'm curious, what you think about it?

Ira: It's great that there's more content, and it's great that the question is around if we have too much content, instead of "do we have enough content?" For me, it's about honing in on the appropriate content for the audience.

There's an opportunity for us to use tools and to curate, to really help us break the clutter of content down. That's what it's all about. It's not about controlling the amount of content. It's about creating great content and making that content available to audiences.

See also: Leveraging the Truth About Customer Service in Content Marketing [Zendesk Interview]

Scripted: Can you explain your internal content strategy and the structure of your content team?

Ira: We have three people on our content team. Aside from myself, our coordinator Summer Luu, and our extraordinary intern Julian help make all things marketing go at Atomic Reach. Together we execute a few things that are very vital to our content strategy. The first one is our blog strategy, because of our platform and because of what we're all about is blogging and blog content, we tend to blog at least three times a week on themes related to thought leadership and our products.

We are voracious tweeters. We tweet a lot. We have a plan set up that we tweet original and curated content probably, at minimum, 12 times a day.

See also: How to Tell if You Need a Copywriter or Content Writer

Scripted: What type of content would you say is most valuable or resonates the most with your audience, and why?

Ira: For our audience it really is around content that speaks to them about making their content creation experience better. We do a lot of things around how to create better audience centric content. How to write to the level of sophistication of your audience? How do you use emotion when you're writing? The themes of our thought leadership position on content marketing, blogging, audience and content creation all resonate with our audience.

Scripted What's a good way for a brand publisher to get to know their audience?

Ira: Try things. Try putting out stories. Try putting out tweets, or other messages and see who responds and who participates.

The greatest communities are those where people connect with and are active with your brand or service, or your content. It's not about always figuring that out before you write. Sometimes, it's about just doing what you got to do, and then figuring out what your audience wants and likes.

What do you think about this interview? Share your thoughts with us below.

To Read More Expert Interviews, Click the Links Below:

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Alexis Grant of Socialexis: How to Grow an Audience Through Content Creation