New Flavors: Understand and Create Content for Mobile and Other New Channels
Your audience craves content. But it has to be fresh and relevant. To keep their attention, you need content for a variety of channels — specifically for mobile. So mobile-friendly content needs to be at the forefront of your content strategy.
But you already know this. Because 90 percent of a consumer’s time spent on a mobile device is spent in an app, 71 percent of enterprises plan to create more mobile apps in 2016 than they did in 2015, and 76 percent are creating more content for apps.
But it’s clear: creating content for mobile has it’s challenges.
Your content can’t be engaging or effective if it doesn’t work on a phone or tablet. That’s why you have to provide your design team with the right tools to create content for these smaller surfaces. Adopting a mobile-first design approach will increase the likelihood that your mobile strategy will be effective.
For more details on a content strategy that can work for you, check out our full Mass Producing Deliciousness report.
Overcoming The Mobile Challenge
While businesses want to create more and better mobile experiences, designing an effective experience on mobile can be difficult. Only 38 percent of businesses report that their mobile apps deliver value. Fortunately, there are solutions to help you overcome mobile challenges.
Prototyping. Much of the challenge in developing for mobile today is in the format. You’re faced with creating content that works well on a variety of screen sizes, surfaces, browsers, and operating systems. Prototyping is important because it takes your concept from brainstorming on sticky notes and whiteboards to a real device in your hand. With a prototype you can get solid feedback from a variety of users while the app is complete enough for them to understand what the experience will be, but also early enough to incorporate suggestions and requirements. Good prototyping tools can even give you real-time previews and updates on several different devices.
Analytics and testing. Your analytics team can help you understand what’s working and what’s not. You need to adopt a culture of optimization to continually test and refine what content your customers prefer to engage with in your apps.
Responsive web. You also need to consider your approach to mobile apps vs. mobile websites — they need to be treated as two different channels, but integrated as closely as possible. If you’re not sure how to integrate your content strategy between the two, take a look at how Audi has created an integrated approach for mobile that helps them use their mobile app in alongside their site.
Finally, don’t waste time resizing and reformatting the same file over and over. Invest in tools that help you create, share, and publish cross-device content in an efficient way.
Moving Beyond Mobile
Beyond mobile, other channels are growing, too. Wearables, the Internet of Things (IoT), and a bunch of new social media and messaging sites all provide new opportunities to reach your audience. While content created for desktop is slowly decreasing, 26 percent of enterprises say they are creating content today for wearables and that number will double (51%) in the next three years.
Be open to new opportunities — even ones that may seem small. Set aside a percentage of production time and resources to continuously test content for new media and channels.
Maintaining Variety
Meeting your basic content creation needs means feeding the channels you already have. So, ensure you have the tools and processes to create content faster and more efficiently. Then spend time experimenting not only with new channels, but also with different content types. People remember ingenuity and innovation. Your customers expect the best experience — and they will quickly go to wherever they find it.