In the 2018 edition of We Are Social’s report; the mobile phone is still the king of content consumption. With 68% penetration this year from last year’s 66% penetration, it is obvious that more and more content will be delivered and consumed mobile-first. Hence, the reason to start designing stories for mobile.
And to win the mobile content game, you have to be “in” the game.
How do you do that?
Your content needs to be short, personal and shareable.
Short
Much of the internet avoids long format content. And for mobile-first content, make sure it’s visual, and your copy won’t take the whole afternoon to read.
Personal
Always include your own voice in your content. Create content as if you are right there in front of your target audience. Always be conversational in your approach. Don’t preach.
Shareable
Mobile devices are designed in a way that whenever quality content is published, people share it. It takes a maximum of two fingers to do that on a mobile device, keep this in mind when you are designing content for mobile.
Since mobile devices are pocket-friendly gadgets, make sure you design content that is pocket-friendly. Things that your target audience can carry around and can easily remember. The more they remember your content, the more they talk about it with their friends.
Here are some practical applications of designing stories for mobile.
I am breaking it down into a few popular industries in the market today; branding, design, IT solutions & marketing.
Why I choose these? I believe these are an almost oversaturated market and designing stories for mobile in these industries would give you an edge over your competitor.
A mobile-first approach is a content-first approach so you would really need to prioritize content. The heart of your brand is your content. #ContentMarketing #InboundMarketing Click To TweetBranding
Branding is a complex web of creativity and market insights. If you are not a visual person, you would think that branding is something that you would get easily bored with. But digging deep into the conversation going around in this space, you would begin to appreciate the value of branding in your day to day life as an entrepreneur.
Designing stories for mobile in the branding space would require a strategy that combines research and your own insights. You can break down your stories for mobile in a couple of sub-concepts; customer experience and brand experience. In your stories, you can tackle how do you bridge these two? How does customer experience match the brand promise that you intend to deliver. Use nuggets of visuals and captions. Use life cycles of user experience. From discovering your brand to learning and all the way to amplifying. What is happening? What is short, personal and shareable content that you can build out of this lifecycle?
Design
The late Steve Jobs busted the myth that design is how a product should look like, according to him, design is how the user uses the product. That is what design is meant to achieve, more than anything else is ease of use. So what type of mobile stories can you create in this space? A simple search on Google Trends will give you the top trending queries in the graphic design space. Meaning, you will know what most people on this planet is trying to find out in terms of design. Start writing something to provide the answer that people are looking for. Over time, you will get a share of the traffic – given that you create quality content.
Some of the content you can write can talk about how your customers can use their mobile devices to create their own content. If you can demonstrate how this can be done in a few clicks, then you are off to creating shareable content.
IT solutions
One of the busiest department in an office in terms of traffic is the IT department. Hence, a company providing IT solutions should look and sound quick, responsive and adaptable. IT solution providers most of the time are stereotyped as the nerdy geeks with a tool in their hand. What if you started crafting content that will go against this norm. Why not look cool and hip and awesome? Try to come up with short videos demonstrating easy solutions for IT related problems in an office environment. Make it trivial and fun.
Marketing
Buffer social puts the icing on the cake, make sure you visit the link below this page to see what the data has to say in terms of shareable content. In the marketing space, there is a lot of conversation about personalization and making your content “human.” According to research, content that is human by nature gets shared the most. If you are a small company, what better way to make your content human by being the “face” of your brand. Give your personal insights, share your success story, share your customer engagement model. You can even talk about the best practices, those you agree to and those you disagree with.
If your content is mobile-first, it translates better to all the devices out there. A mobile-first approach is a content-first approach so you would really need to prioritize content. The heart of your brand is your content. Users go to your website/blogs for content above all things.
In our storytelling for SMEs cookbook, we discussed in a bit more detail how you could craft your own stories. Check out the article if you haven’t yet.
We are interested to find out what you want to learn about storytelling?
Source:
https://blog.bufferapp.com/shareable-content-social-media-research
