Modular Content Vs Traditional Content: Which One Will Make A Difference For Your Business?

When putting together your content marketing guidelines, you will need to define the type of content, among other details, you will be using.

Content marketing is now one of the most powerful ways in the digital market (and print) to get the products and services in the hands of consumers. This is true for small, medium and large companies.

However, when it comes to deciding your content strategy and what type of content is best for you it can be a little confusing.

In this article we will examine modular content versus traditional content.

We hope this allows you to incorporate the right instructions in your content marketing guidelines from the start.

The type of content you decide to use will have an effect on your overall success and growth.

Everyone is familiar with the broad strokes of what we call “traditional content” but in order to understand how both work, you would need an in-depth understanding.

What is Traditional Content?

We are not going to complicate this concept for you.

Traditional content is content as we have always known it. It is original content, developed after research or from tapping into our many years of knowledge.

There are many ways to look at traditional content, and you can spend hours trying to see what the real definition might entail.

Traditional content is exactly what it sounds like.

It is billboards, and magazine ads. It is television ads, flyers and articles.

Another way to look at traditional content is to understand that its structure has one specific audience in mind, one message in mind and generally it is inflexible.

The above sentence might sound a bit confusing but let’s take a billboard ad for example.

It is advertising one product, using specific content that was picked for that particular billboard, based on location and other factors. There is a good chance this type of content is not going to be as useful or effective when taken out of that context.

What is Modular Content?

Modular content is relatively new. It is more of a method than content.

It is how you develop content that makes the difference.

Modular content is absolutely genius.

Here is why.

Creating original content daily can become a challenge even for the best of writers. Keeping that challenge in mind, we are now given the solution with modular content.

Modular content simply means content “recycling”.

For example, you can use an eBook or another pre-existing large document, and from that extract 10 different articles, or enough material for 50 newsletters.

Then you can take those 10 articles and create even smaller entries, perhaps social media content snippets.

Another popular example would be to take a podcast, and write it out. Let’s assume the podcast is about survival techniques.

You can extract enough material daily from the podcast, to update your social media and write a blog article daily.

Using modular content usually entails taking a larger piece of content and recycling, or reconstructing it into different smaller pieces of content.

You can keep deconstructing this content and be left with 100 tweets or social media updates.

This method of generating content can be extremely useful, especially for people who need to create content on a daily basis.

Now, here is a strange way to demonstrate the power of modular content.

What if we were to take smaller, seemingly random quotes or blog articles, and from that go on to create a larger document such as an eBook or even a YouTube channel where we discuss this content?

A good example of modular content that existed from ages ago, would be commentary on something that has already happened.

I remember some videos on YouTube a few years back (I am sure they are still popular) where the owner of the channel would simply comment on someone else’s video. This is a great example of modular content.

Which Type of Content is More Appropriate For Your Company?

Traditional content is safe and familiar, but tends to be best suited for companies that have already been established and are not heavy on education the audience on who they are and what they do.

In other words it is well suited for companies that already have their market share secured.

A great example would be Coca Cola.

No matter how much content Coca Cola throws at us, we are already familiar with the brand, and we either love it, or we stay away from sodas.

Traditional companies do well with traditional marketing content such as billboards, TV ads during the Superbowl, and simple magazine ads to remind us that they are still here.

Modular content, on the other hand, is best suited for anything digital and new.

Any new companies that come out, with a primary presence online, need modular content to stay on top of the marketing game (SEO and all the rest).

Innovative companies and startups need to use modular content to help them rank better online.

They need constant social media updates to engage potential new clients, and they need to show consistency to the people who are watching.

This is why startups and other small innovative business ventures rely on modular content.

So if your company is new, or has an online presence with a good social media following, you should begin thinking of how to incorporate modular content in your content marketing guidelines.

It is not just a time saver, but it also allows the marketing team to stay consistent in their message.