The default mode for technical communications is basic, narrative-style unstructured content. It is easy to understand why, since most technical writing groups start out small in terms of members and products to document. A non-structured approach is the easiest way to start. As a company matures and its product line diversifies, the old way of doing documentation becomes more costly and unable to meet a company’s needs.

There comes a point when structured content becomes a necessity not only to meet the demands of the global market, but also to provide the flexibility to meet the demands of those using its products. If you are going to use structured content, it makes the most business sense to go with an existing standard so your writing team can leverage the development effort and toolset that went into that standard.

What Is Structured Content? A Breakdown of the Basics

Structured content refers to information that is organized into distinct elements and separated from its formatting. Unlike unstructured text, where everything exists as a single block, structured content breaks information into reusable components, such as:

  • Headings (H1, H2, etc.)
  • Paragraphs and body text
  • Metadata (tags, categories, author names)
  • Images, videos, and links
  • Dates, prices, and product specifications

By structuring content this way, businesses ensure that their website and digital platforms can dynamically use, repurpose, and optimize information for different channels.

Why Use Structured Content?

While there is an initial investment in tools, capital, and training to move a documentation team to  structured authoring, the benefits are worth it. In the long term, costs are reduced and there are more options for content delivery. Some of the benefits include:

  • Greatly reduced localization costs
  • More consistent product information
  • Improved SEO as prospective customers discover better targeted content
  • Internal efficiencies as writers reuse content more effectively

Companies around the world who use structured content can testify—all these points have long been proven in practice. While these benefits are feasible when using a proprietary system for structuring content, additional factors drive most firms to choose an open, structured content standard.

Why Go with a Structured Content Standard?

There are several sound business reasons for wanting to work with an open, structured content standard. One of the obvious benefits is that an open standard that has successfully been deployed by other organizations for at least a decade has already been vetted from a business perspective. In other words, all the hard work has already been done by other companies. Your company can gain the benefits of the business “smarts” that has already been built into the standard.

Other key reasons for wanting to go with an open, structured content standard include:

  • Interoperability between systems
  • No vendor lock-in; off-the-shelf tools
  • Ability to easily exchange content in a common format between vendors
  • Access to a wide range of dynamic delivery software
  • A wider community for support and use case advice

In addition to these points, you are future-proofing content, paving the way for new interactive technologies like chatbots that are being built on open structured content standards.

The Benefits of Structured Content

1. Reusability Across Multiple Platforms

With structured content, you create information once and use it in multiple places—on a blog, an FAQ page, social media, or even a chatbot response. This efficiency ensures consistency across all touchpoints.

2. Personalization for Different Audiences

Modern organization strategies rely on structured content to tailor experiences based on user preferences, location, and behavior. For example:

  • E-commerce sites adjust product recommendations dynamically.
  • B2B companies serve personalized whitepapers based on industry interests.
  • News websites suggest articles based on reader history.

By leveraging structured data, businesses can fine-tune content delivery to maximize engagement.

3. Enhanced Productivity and Cost Savings

Since structured content is built for modular use, updates happen faster, with fewer errors. Instead of manually adjusting every instance of a product description across a website, companies can edit a single structured entry and update all instances instantly.

So Where Does DITA Fit in? 

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (“DITA” for short), is an open structured content standard, that has been in use since 2005. It is the most popular structured content standard, and is used worldwide at over 700 firms across a diverse range of technology sectors. DITA continues to gain significant traction. As it has matured, software vendors have in turn created writing tools, content management systems, and dynamic delivery systems tailored to it.

DITA has become the de facto way to do structured content, and has become a competitive advantage for those firms that use it. Why not yours?