Content will always be the best way to get people to buy products and services on the Internet in 2022 and beyond.
Great content is a powerful way of generating leads and driving qualified traffic to your website.
Great content is also powerful in making exceptional users experiences that will excite your existing and potential customers.
If you do not want your website to become obsolete, then you need to ditch the stale content strategy and find ways to make the user experiences much more enticing.
The best way to do this is to use modular content.
You need to find new ways in which to feed the content monster across multiple channels and make sure that each piece of content is created and targeted for its particular audience.
This is quite a demanding task, and the only way you can meet the demand is to use modular content.
Today you are going to learn what the concept of modular content is, explain the benefits that you will derive from adopting the technique, and how exactly you can create modular content, using a headless CMS.
So, What Exactly is Modular Content?
This is a new concept in which small reusable forms of content are created, managed, and distributed across various channels and devices.
There has been a steady increase in the need for content to be used on mobile platforms, so companies today have to create small chunks of reusable content for each of these devices and channels.
The reason why the content is called “Modular” is that the content is created in the form of reusable “Blocks” or “Modules”.
These modules can be in the form of a piece of text, a short video, or a product image. It can be constructed, deconstructed, and combined with other content pieces, in order to create targeted content pieces for particular audiences.
Think of what you would be able to do if you had LEGO bricks, made of plasticine.
As LEGO bricks, you can arrange them in many ways to make different creations. As plasticine, also known as molding dough, you can model each of the bricks to come up with different shapes of bricks.
Take a simple example: When you combine a block of content, and then add an image or diagram, and turn them into a blog article.
You can then take the same text and combine it with a video and come up with content for a landing page.
You may additionally combine the same text, with a video and a fancy image and create yet another piece of content, such as a testimonial or case study.
This means that the content that you own is made of small blocks, which can be combined in various ways so as to be distributed across relevant channels and targeted at different audiences.
Having a modular content strategy could also work well when you have the technical knowledge on how to optimize each of these modules for their specific targeted audience.
Why Do You Need Modular Content?
Due to the huge amount of content that you need to feed the multiple channels available to marketers today, you need content that can be used over and over again.
Content creators and authors have struggled with creating content to keep up with the demand, and this has led to the development of restrictive workflows and other challenging bottlenecks, as they try to mold a traditional content strategy to meet these needs.
You need to understand just how different traditional and modular content is to know why you need modular content.
Modular vs. Traditional Content
Modular Content | Traditional Content |
Reusable content types | Custom content types and not reusable |
Highly adaptable content | Fairly rigid content |
Can be used across several channels | Can be used across limited channels |
Very easy to edit and reconfigure | Cannot be easily edited into a new form of content |
The Benefits of Having a Modular Content Strategy
There are several benefits that you can derive from adopting a modular content approach. All these benefits work towards removing restrictions that traditional content approaches place upon the people creating your content.
Here are some of these benefits:
Speedy Content Creation
Because of the omnichannel environment, there is a need to create content fast.
With modular content, teas can come up with content faster, since they can work from pre-approved modular blocks.
This can help marketers to create and launch landing pages and content campaigns much faster.
For example, the content team can pick up information from a high-performing page, that was probably used when the product or service was initially launched. And then use the content to talk about a feature that they have upgraded over time; perhaps this has been a feature that customers have been asking for.
Regular Content Production
When you use a modular content approach, you allow your content team to be more flexible and agile with their content production.
You can break down a large campaign, that could take months to prepare, into smaller chunks, which will be easy to come up with and to release regularly for the full period of the campaign.
You can release these small chunks quickly, and then they can be combined to create a larger, in-depth content, at a later date, which will tie up all the smaller elements shared before.
Seamless Workflows
Modular blocks can be prepared and approved so that the content team does not need to send each piece of content for reapproval, as long as they remain within the boundaries of the pre-approved content blocks.
Teams can now simply edit the context of a modular block, which would make it easy to tailor the content to a new audience, without having to take the content up the chain for another approval process.
Quicker Personalization
Today, consumers prefer personalized content, and having a modular content strategy will make it very easy for your content team to personalize the content accordingly.
As mentioned above, all the team has to do is tailor the context for easier personalization. This allows the same piece of content to be used for a wide range of user personas.
Higher Consistency
Marketing teams have a branding guideline, which determines the colors, fonts, and everything about the feel and look of content before it can be published.
This is quite a good thing, but no matter how streamlined a brand guideline is, there are times when inconsistencies crop up.
When trying to experiment with new things, which is very crucial to success in the digital world, you may find inconsistencies cropping up.
When you use modular content, there is less risk of having inconsistencies, since you will be using content that has already gone through certain approval processes.
This is crucial when you want to create localized marketing campaigns, which may borrow elements from previous campaigns, that need only to be modified so they are relevant to particular customers. Think about creating content that was previously written in English, to target people who speak only Japanese.
Improved Reusability
One can never look down upon the reusable nature of modular content – it is one of the strong points of this type of content.
When the elements of modular content are reused to create new content, they are basically being used to extend the shelf life of that content.
For example, an in-depth case study can be stripped down into infographics, small blog articles, and a lot more.
They can further be broken down and used, in conjunction with images, on social media platforms.
A Few Tips For Creating A Modular Content Strategy
The above benefits are just a tip of the icing. There are many more benefits that you can derive from adopting a modular content strategy.
If you want to adopt a modular content strategy, here are a few tips on what you can do:
#1: Have a Modular Content Team
Organize your content team so that you have a dedicated small group that is mainly concerned with the creation of modular content.
The modular content team will be tasked with making sure that the whole company has the workflows and processes that make it easy to have a modular approach.
The team will also find ways to improve these processes, using the right tools, to make sure that everything works together as it should.
#2: Come Up with a Definite Content Shelf Life
When you know the shelf life of a particular piece of content, then you can determine just how long it can be used for a modular content strategy.
For example, breaking news content can only be used once. However, a detailed product page or a glossary can be used for a long time, and only need to have content updated over time.
This is content that can also serve as a pillar page, for other smaller modules of content in the future.
#3: Clearly Define Your Audience Pool
When you are coming up with any piece of content, you will need to identify the potential user personas who will consume the content.
You need to know just how each user persona will view and interpret your content.
You also need to know just how many content concepts will be attractive to each user persona.
For example, when you look at Content Management Space, content is created for C-Suite Business Users, developers, and marketers. This means that each piece of content that is created has to be adapted for each of these personas.
This means that each piece of content will end up being 3 pieces of content to fit each of these personas.
#4: Identify where Content Fits in the Sales Funnel
The position of the content within the sales funnel will determine how modular it should be.
For example, you can break down a larger content piece, ideal for BOFU use, and use the smaller pieces at the top of the funnel.
#5: Make Use of the Headless CMS
Before you can adopt a piece of content for various channels, you need to have it stored in a central database. This is the reason why you must have a headless CMS so you can derive the most out of a modular content strategy.
When you use a headless CMS, you give your content team a content hub, with the tools and workflows required to make the best out of it.
You create an omnichannel delivery system by removing the backend and frontend interfaces from one another.
This means that you can store content in the backend, which can then be modified for delivery to specific and customized frontends, by using the necessary APIs.
Let’s take a practical example of an article that we have done on this site.
Take this article “Inclusivity: The New Driver of Social Media Marketing Success” which happens to be an in-depth approach to how inclusivity can boost your social media marketing success.
It is a long article, which will initially attract people who want an in-depth guide, and who have the time and desire to read long-form content.
However, even though the article has very crucial information, it will not work for people who are very busy and do not have the time to read long-form content.
They are probably just looking for an overview on the subject.
You can now change the content into smaller modules, by breaking u the larger article into smaller articles, based on the sections of the larger article.
I hope you get the meaning.
For example, One module can talk about why accessibility, or inclusivity is crucial for social media marketing.
Another module can skim over the tips that you need to adopt in order to have more inclusivity in your social media marketing campaigns.
You can go on breaking the article into smaller modules, with some ending up as being tweets, or small Facebook posts.
In this way, you will have turned a large piece of content into smaller modules that can be quickly distributed across various channels.
Takeaway
There is an ever-increasing pressure for content creators to create and distribute finished content pieces, with speed, and within short-term needs.
This may be tests of new ideas and messaging.
With modular content creation, you can easily configure and manage content, for faster deployment.
Having a modular content strategy also means that you can keep a piece of content for a long time, and preserve its quality, which will give it longer useful life and improve the ROI from that piece of content.
The largest business impact that you get from using modular content is the ability and flexibility to scale the content output, while at the same time maintaining relevance.
There is no quality in content if it is not relevant.
The best way to keep your content relevant, and therefore have a perceived quality to the audience, is to use modular content.
This is content that will keep your visitors riveted to your messaging, by simply reusing your existing content in more creative ways.