An expert’s take on effective blog content
MyMobileLyfe recently had a chat via email with Danny Wong of Shareaholic about blogs, their ideal length and what works for writing and publishing for a mobile device.
An entrepreneur, marketer and writer, Wong is a blog expert who has contributed to Entrepreneur.com, The Huffington Post and Search Engine Journal. He is also co-founder of Blank Label, a custom menswear brand.
Is there an ideal length for blog posts written for a mobile device?
Not at all. Long or short, mobile readers love it all. In fact, these days readers have adjusted to reading on small screens and are more than happy to scroll on and on as long as the content is worth reading. Anecdotally, I recall reading The New Yorker on my iPhone. Some articles had 100-plus “pages” to flip through. But I devoured them all without skimming simply because the stories were entertaining, engaging and educational.
Are long-form articles, say about 3,000 words or more, effective for reading on a smartphone or tablet?
Absolutely. Just make sure you have a font that’s easily legible and that the article’s container is fully responsive, so all the words fit on screen. A bit of vertical scrolling never hurt anyone, of course.
What type of story content is the best for the mobile device?
Lightweight visuals (not infographics) and prose are quite effective.
Does adding visual content, like images and video, to the mobile blog articles help?
Indeed they do. The most important thing is that they are super lightweight. Not all consumers have generous mobile data plans and often some visuals are hard to view and interpret even after zooming in.
Budgets are always a concern. Is it better for the owner of a small to midsized business to do their own content creation and publishing, or outsource it?
The cost of publishing content, whether in-house or outsourced, is costly any way you look at it. The opportunity cost of having employees write instead of taking care of their other responsibilities can add up, especially if your designated “contributors” are new to blogging. Evaluate your strengths and weaknesses in order to assess whether or not it is worth keeping content creation and publishing in-house. If you realize it would be too costly to produce articles using existing team members, there are plenty of freelancers and agencies who can help and they won’t necessarily cost you an arm and a leg either.
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