Reusable content refers to content elements or assets that can be repurposed, adapted, and reused across various platforms, channels, or marketing campaigns. Instead of creating content from scratch every time, reusable content allows marketers to leverage existing assets, such as images, videos, infographics, written articles, or templates, to create new content or distribute it across multiple channels.
This approach saves time and resources while maintaining consistency in messaging and branding. Reusable content also enables marketers to efficiently scale their content production and maintain a cohesive brand presence across different platforms and touchpoints.
How does this look in practice?
Let's say a financial institution has a whitepaper on "Investment Strategies for Retirement". This whitepaper is a well-researched and comprehensive piece of content that includes information on various investment options, the benefits and risks associated with each option, and tips for creating a retirement investment plan.
The institution can leverage this whitepaper in several ways. They can extract smaller sections of the whitepaper, such as a section on "Types of Investments" or "Benefits of Investing Early," and turn them into standalone blog posts or social media posts. These posts can be shared on various channels to reach a wider audience and drive traffic to their website.
Additionally, the institution can repurpose the whitepaper into other formats, such as a webinar or a video series. This allows the institution to reach different audiences and cater to different learning preferences.
By using the whitepaper as a source of reusable content, the institution can save time and resources while still creating valuable and informative content for their audience.
The two approaches to reusable content
Both of the following approaches aim to improve content efficiency, flexibility, and consistency, but they have slightly different emphases in terms of their content management and delivery strategies.
1. Composable content:
Composable content refers to the practice of creating content components that can be assembled and combined in various ways to create different experiences. It emphasizes the flexibility and agility of content assembly, allowing marketers to dynamically combine and rearrange content components to meet specific needs or personalize content for different audiences. Composable content focuses on the orchestration and dynamic assembly of content blocks to create engaging and tailored experiences.
Let's consider an association that serves professionals in the healthcare industry that has a digital platform where members can access resources, participate in discussions, and stay updated on industry news.
Using composable content, the association can create various content components or blocks that represent different topics or categories, such as "Career Development," "Industry Trends," "Research Insights," and "Networking Opportunities."
When a member logs into the platform, the association's system dynamically assembles content based on the member's preferences and interests. For example, a member interested in career development might see a personalized dashboard with content blocks related to professional growth, such as articles on skill development, webinars on career advancement, and job listings in their field.
The composable content system allows the association to flexibly combine and rearrange content blocks based on individual member profiles and preferences. If the member explores more content on a specific topic, such as industry trends, the system adapts and surfaces additional relevant content in that category, such as research reports, expert interviews, or event announcements.
By leveraging composable content, the association can deliver tailored experiences to each member, fostering engagement, providing relevant information, and creating a sense of personalization. This approach ensures that members receive content aligned with their interests and professional needs, ultimately enhancing their overall membership experience with the association.
2. Modularized content:
Modularized content refers to the process of breaking down content into discrete, self-contained modules or units. These modules can be individual pieces of content, such as articles, images, videos, or infographics. Each module is independent and can stand alone, but it can also be combined with other modules to create larger content pieces or experiences. Modularized content emphasizes the organization and structure of content components, making it easier to manage and reuse content elements across different channels and touchpoints.
A bank, for instance, can use modularized content in several ways. For instance, suppose it wants to provide educational resources to its customers, such as articles, videos, and interactive tools. The bank could create modularized content pieces, such as individual articles on budgeting, saving for retirement, and paying off debt, that can be combined and repurposed in different formats, such as blog posts, infographics, and e-books.
The modularized content pieces can be tagged with relevant keywords and metadata to make them easily searchable and discoverable. This approach allows the bank to create a library of educational content that can be quickly assembled and repurposed for various marketing campaigns, customer segments, and channels, without having to create each piece from scratch.
The difficulty with reusable content
As we’ve learned, composable content focuses on context—the dynamic assembly and personalized delivery of content components, while modularized content focuses on consistency—the organization and reuse of individual content modules.
Both approaches aim to improve content efficiency and flexibility, but neither ensures both context and consistency—critically important elements in content delivery.
Content needs to be unique and engaging enough to captivate your audience’s attention and elevate your brand awareness while also telling a consistent story about your brand across everything from whitepapers to social posts.
Empowering your teams with reusable capabilities
DXPs (digital experience platforms) support marketers in leveraging reusable content in several ways:
Not only do their centralized content management tools aid marketers in finding, organizing and categorizing their content assets, (ensuring content is easily accessible, version-controlled, and shareable across multiple channels and touchpoints), but the built-in content creation, templating, and editing tools enable them to create and modify content efficiently using WYSIWYG editors, drag-and-drop interfaces, and templates. All of which make it easier to create reusable content components.
Marketers are able to personalize and tailor content based on user preferences, behaviors, or demographics and leverage reusable content components to dynamically assemble and deliver personalized content experiences to different audience segments.
DXPs also provide analytics and reporting capabilities that help marketers track the performance and effectiveness of reusable content and gain insights into how the content is being consumed, which components are resonating with the audience, and make data-driven decisions to optimize their content strategy.
More advanced DXPs enable the tagging of modular content with the stage of the customer journey that the orignal content was designed for, helping marketers bring context and consistency together in perfect harmony and to deliver the right content at the right time to the right person... every time.
Maximizing the value of your content
Reusable content is a valuable tool that allows you to maximize your content investments and efficiently deliver consistent messaging across multiple channels.
DXPs provide marketers with the necessary tools and features to effectively leverage reusable content, such as content management systems, personalization capabilities, and multi-channel delivery options. They streamline content creation, distribution, and measurement processes, and ultimately enhance your marketing efforts to drive better results.
Our ebook, “Content respect or content madness?” goes into detail about the different types of content and offers tips for streamlining the process of content composition to ensure both context and consistency. So, even when you’re reusing content, you’re always serving up content that matches your audiences’ stage in the customer journey.