5 real-world use cases of modular content built using Brightspot

Seminaries and institutes push out large amounts of learning content to their audiences, which often feature things like phrases from religious writing.

These phrases are often reused hundreds of times, and each usage must therefore be consistent.

On top of that, these types of organizations may have audiences that live all around the world, requiring translations for some content so that it is easily understandable for their users.

Without modular content

Without modular content, an editorial team member may have to read through the text, find the appropriate phrase, and type it into the topic they are writing, either manually or by copying and pasting from another source of information.

This must happen each time a piece of content is created, meaning multiple editorial team members will be going through this process potentially many times a day. Depending on how much content this team produces, the same process could need to be repeated hundreds if not thousands of times a year.

Each piece of content—and the phrases within them—might also have to be translated for each audience in a one-off way.

With modular content

With a modular approach, editorial teams can begin by simply loading the phrase into the CMS once.

After that, they can use a workflow to ensure it gets translated to each language it needs to be translated in. This workflow will also help ensure the right eyes are on the phrase to make sure it is accurate.

After that, editorial team members can simply insert that modular content into whichever content piece they are writing and move on with other parts of their process.

These days, it’s easy to see how much content media companies are under pressure to produce on a daily basis. Trying to keep up with the sheer amount of breaking news is a challenge in itself.

Imagine being a news organization covering a speech that an official makes about an important legislation; many quotes from this speech—and even parts of the legislation itself—will have to be pulled out and used in multiple pieces of content in a single day, week, or even beyond that.

Without modular content

These kinds of quotes—whether they are from speeches, interviews, or from legislation—take time to extract from the source material.

If it’s a quote, the reporter will have to transcribe it; if it’s legislation, the reporter will have to sift through legal language to find the right part.

This must be done each time a new article or live feed post is created. If any parts of the source are misquoted or misunderstood, the legitimacy of the news organization takes a hit. The stakes are high, and the deadlines are tight.

With modular content

With modular content, quotes can be loaded into the CMS and put through a workflow to ensure they are accurate.

Once they exist in a modular way like this, they can be reused across any and all articles or other kinds of content that need to reference them. A reporter must simply add that piece of modular content to the article they are writing, and then they can move on onto other tasks.

Life sciences organizations, who may develop medicine or other beneficial drugs for public consumption, are under intense scrutiny to ensure the information they publish is approved and accurate.

This kind of language—like descriptions of different drugs, their side effects and other important information—must pass through a rigorous medical review process and then be reassembled into campaigns for print, web, newsletters, and other channels.

This extends beyond just the language; even the headlines and images used in conjunction with the text must get the green light.

Without modular content

Imagine being such an organization that produces a public health product that undergoes strict regulatory review.

Many conversations are had about how to talk about this product publicly, and there are many stakeholders involved in seeing that the language used to describe the product is accurate, including the headlines and images used alongside it.

Every piece of the puzzle must be perfect—there is no room for error.

Without modular content, editorial teams might have to copy and paste approved language, headlines or images from a common document. Yes, that information has presumably been approved by the right people, but there is still room for error in a situation that can’t afford any error.

This must happen each time this health product is mentioned on a website. That’s a lot of copying and pasting, and leaves a lot of room for mistakes to be made.

With modular content

By making the language, headlines, and images modular, they can undergo review one time, and one time only, by being put through a workflow that has the right people overseeing it.

Each time a writer needs to describe the health product, and no matter what kind of content they are creating, they can simply pull from that pre-approved Modular Content pool, saving them time (and a great deal of stress).

Software companies must ensure that their users understand how to use their software. If they don’t, help desk support lines will be tied up each day by frustrated users who were never given the instructions they need to use the software properly. When that happens, ratings drop and the business takes a major hit.

As a result, software documentation becomes crucially important; however, this can be a challenge, too, since the software might be usable across multiple devices, like iPhones, Androids, Macs and PCs.

This means that documentation must have many different versions that describe the software in a way that is accurate per device.

Without modular content

Documentation often has an organized layout with blocks of information like a title, a description, a step-by-step direction section, and a footer.

Without modular content, each of these sections needs to be manually entered for each document. If, as described above, the software runs on multiple different operating systems, the amount of work required to maintain consistency across all documentation increases exponentially.

On top of this, technical writers who write this documentation must ensure it is approved and accurate before publishing.

With modular content

By making the blocks of information modular—like titles, descriptions, and more—technical writers can simply upload the appropriate text once and then reuse it multiple times across all documentation.

While step-by-step instructions included in the documentation may be unique per operating system, it’s likely that the titles, descriptions, and footers will not be; therefore, technical writers save time by simply being able to select an approved block of content in the CMS and reference it in the right location.

Global consultancy firms often must deliver localized content alongside global content. An article about sustainability, for example, might make sense from a global perspective, but the consultancy firm may have a few paragraphs that need to be tailored toward a localized group of their audience.

Without modular content

In practice, this is hard to execute. Editorial teams, especially smaller ones, must undergo the process to create the global content, then take extra time to create the localized content—which may at times need to be translated—and manually tailor the content for each audience.

With modular content

With Modular Content, the global consultancy firm can easily reuse global content by making it available in the CMS whenever an editorial team member needs to use it.

The editorial team member can then spend a greater amount of time on tailoring content for the localized audience.

The content creation process then shrinks in size since editorial team members can focus on creating one-off localized content (or better yet—make it modular and reuse it!) to reach their digital audiences in the geographic areas where they live.