Writing marketing content today is as much—or more—about providing the narration to a great user experience as it is relaying information about a product or service.
Customers—both in B2C and B2B—are probably going to consume your content on multiple devices and in many formats:
Mobile phones
Tablets
Social media sites
Kiosks
Event or store signage
Voice assistants
Email
The best deliveries keep that experience cohesive, simple, and intuitive. To streamline omnichannel consumption, many companies are turning to a headless content management system (CMS).
By separating the creation and storage of content (the back end) from presentation and delivery (the front end), headless CMS isn’t just changing the way users experience your content; it’s changing the way marketing teams think about content development.
Headless CMS: Back to the Future
Years ago, we posted web content through entry interfaces that were more closely related to data entry forms than to the WYSIWYG editors of traditional CMS platforms. We also focused heavily on “chunking” content into bite-sized pieces. In a way, headless CMS harkens back to those habits.
To support the best possible delivery of content across a variety of formats, the headless approach involves creating content bites that can then be ported to any type of front end. For example, suppose you’re creating a web page that may include elements such as:
a banner image
a page heading and subhead
body copy
an introductory paragraph
text sections
infographics or photos
a testimonial quote
a targeted asset
a contact form
With a traditional CMS, you might break out a couple of these items in separate entry fields, but more likely, you'd just lay them out all together in a single content object using a WYSIWYG editor.
A headless system, though, breaks these components down even further and doesn't mix content, layout, and design—keeping the end display more flexible:
a banner image
a page heading
a page subhead
an introductory body paragraph
a second-level heading
a body paragraph
another second-level heading
a second body paragraph
an infographic
a caption
a testimonial quote
a targeted asset heading
a targeted asset description
a targeted asset image
a targeted asset link
a contact form
The CMS enables you to specify which of these pieces should link with others and to add tags and taxonomy notations to each item.
With this information, designers and developers can use programmatic APIs to pull the content into a variety of front ends. The results are more attractive and usable than a big block of content designed for a static web page shoehorned into other formats.
True to Form: Honing Marketing Copywriting
For marketing writers, this approach can offer some distinct advantages. Ideally, each component of any piece of content is designed to lead the reader through to a desired conclusion. Thinking about content in smaller, interrelated chunks can sharpen that copywriting skill.
Is each paragraph as tight and compelling as possible?
Can an image stand on its own (with its caption)?
Which combination of components delivers the most punch in a given format?
Are you truly delivering a cohesive user experience across every channel?
A more granular taxonomy and tagging strategy also enables better reuse of existing content, potentially saving time and sparking greater accuracy and creativity.
Get Creative
At Refactored, we use the Kentico platform, which provides a range of CMS options, from traditional to headless. Our customers can choose the platform—or combination of platforms—that works best for them. And we can help clients easily migrate content from traditional to headless if and when they’re ready for that transition.
Kentico’s cloud-based content hub enables fast and easy content collaboration and collection. From the hub, you can publish content to your website (in the right form for any device), on social media, in a knowledge base, and more.
Still on a traditional CMS? No problem—you can still use the hub as a content base and then pull the desired content into your website once it’s designed. Transitioning? Centralize your content in the hub while you rebuild your digital experiences.
Learn More
Want to learn more about headless CMS options? Start the conversation with us. As a Kentico Gold Partner, we offer decades of experience helping organizations transition to the CMS that best fits their needs—and supports their business goals into the future.