Developing a mobile content marketing strategy isn’t just a good idea. It’s a necessity for staying competitive within your industry. As smartphone and tablet use continues to increase, so does the time that users spend researching products and services, accessing business information on the go, and watching video on their devices. In 2014, daily tablet video viewing is expected to increase from 13 to 20 minutes while daily smartphone viewing will increase from nine to 13 minutes.
It is also important to consider the nature of the mobile environment. 72 percent of consumers are more likely to re-visit mobile-friendly sites. If a website is unresponsive on a mobile device, users are five times more likely to abandon it altogether. Over 60 percent of mobile users leave a site immediately if they cannot find what they are looking for on it. As such, when you decide to take the plunge and put together a mobile content marketing strategy, you have to go all the way and do it properly right from the beginning.
Embrace the mobile first mind set
The old approach for mobile website design was to scale down the desktop design and make it easily navigable on touch screens. However, as over half of all Internet searches take place on mobile devices and this figure only continues to increase, mobile design can no longer be a secondary priority. If you haven’t considered a responsive website design before, now is the time to do so. A responsive web design adjusts automatically to fit on desktop, tablet, and smartphone browsers. If you’re losing a significant amount of traffic to competitors and you don’t have a viable alternative mobile strategy, start exploring responsive design.
Understand mobile habits
Many companies talk about mobile strategies and content marketing without bringing target audience data into the conversation. The more you understand about your audience’s mobile habits, the more success you’ll have creating content that is both natural and compelling for your audience. You should be able to answer the following questions about your potential and existing customers.
- What percentage of your audience in using smartphones versus tablets? Do they prefer to access your site via computers or mobile devices?
- What activities does your audience complete on your site and what type and format of content are they accessing?
- How much time do they spend on your site? This figure plays a significant role in the type of content that you make available for mobile devices. For example, 10 minute long tutorial mobile videos are not an appropriate choice for an audience with an average attention span of 90 seconds.
Write killer headlines
80 percent of people who read articles only read the headlines. As such, there is no question that writing an engaging headline is critical for pulling readers in so that they read the full post. Mobile headlines should be highly relevant, evoke an image or emotional response, and have a powerful, timely hook.