As the population of consumers using mobile devices continues to rise, companies have decisions to make. Should they develop mobile device apps, or optimize their websites to be viewed on smartphones?
This infographic by Boca Raton, Fla.-based MDG Advertising helps break it down. Let us know what you think.
What makes good content marketing for a mobile device?
It informs the consumer, and engages them. It helps the consumer make decisions and connect with the brand. The content goes beyond advice on making a purchase or finding a store nearby. Over time, it builds customer loyalty.
Content Marketing Institute recently came up with five solid examples of retail content created for mobile devices. For those focusing on effective mobile content, these should be worth a look:
Teavana’s mobile site (shown at left) is unique and informative content for fans of the specialty tea shop found in many shopping malls, offering tips from a tea blending tool to brewing instructions for the perfect pot.
An app created for Lowe’s stands out for its “My Lowe’s” feature that helps shoppers remember what they bought at the home improvement store before.
A user-friendly Domino’s Tracker shows what stage a customer’s pizza order is in, whether it is still in the oven or is on its way to being delivered in 30 minutes or less.
Best Buy’s mobile app features content that helps educate consumers as they make their in-store decisions, like a scanner that they can use in the store to compare product features and check out reviews.
The MyWendy’s app (shown at left) has content geared toward the calorie conscious. Customers can set the calorie range for their meal, and they can view a list of items they can choose from to help them stick to their goal. The customer can save a customized meal that displays on the app what each item looks like, as well as the nutritional information.
These five apps have common content characteristics: They engage and inform the customer and give them a reason to stay interested in the brand. For content marketing creators, that is the goal.
Putting together a content marketing strategy for your company can be a significant task. Those charged with promoting and marketing the corporate brand have to take into account how to consistently produce high-quality, informative and engaging content with the resources they have.
Unless the content is outsourced, that means the existing staff must create the narratives or blogs or video segments and identify the best platforms where the investment will best pay off. It’s a lot of work, especially when staffing and budgets are stretched.
But turning to the crowd can help.
Companies can leverage crowdsourcing in their strategy to reach a target audience. Insights and ideas can be drawn from dozens, even hundreds, of contributors. When executed properly, it can play a pivotal role in content marketing efforts in these ways:
Fluff. It’s comforting in pillows, appealing in clouds and essential in marshmallows.
But when it comes to content geared toward communicating your brand message, fluff is the unnecessary stuff that can block the purpose of what you have to present. That can cost you customers, which is the ultimate goal.
It’s always a challenge to communicate what you have to say effectively and precisely, especially when it comes to marketing a product or brand. The temptation for those creating written content is to show how much they know by producing as much as they can.
Unnecessary words creep into the narrative, clichés work their way into the presentation, concise descriptions are replaced by wordy phases.
The fluff can obfuscate the message you wish to present of your business or brand, which is not what customers seeking to be informed and educated want.
The quality of the writing and how you deliver your point is key, rather than how much of it is written. Tight, concise writing is essential to reach out to those with limited attention spans and a multitude of online distractions.
It can be a task, but the goal is getting the job done with content that connects with your consumer audience, and doing it effectively.
The search engine is proving to be the most essential tool at the disposal of smartphone users who responded to a recent survey.
It’s what 
they turn to when they want to know about what restaurant to dine at, the retailer to make a purchase, how to get from Point A to Point B. And it almost always involves accessing good, informative and searchable content for the mobile device.
Research by the advertising and technology company Local Corporation, gleaned from an online survey of 1,294 mobile shoppers in March, found that 73 percent of customers use search engines like Google in their smartphones to do their research about a product.
Search engine results are also a top influencer in purchasing decisions, with half of those customers surveyed saying it helps them make a decision, and 42 percent saying they rely on ratings and reviews.
The use of apps and other websites continues to gain traction, according to Local Corporation. Thirty-three percent of those surveyed turned to companies’ mobile specific websites, and 24 percent accessed mobile apps.
As consumers use their smartphones more for online searches, companies will need to do more than rely on keywords or search terms to attract customers. It also means a commitment on their part to high-quality content.
A new study says older adults are favoring tablets and e-book readers over smartphones, even as smartphone ownership among Americans has exceeded 50 percent.
Only 18 percent of Americans 65 and older own a smartphone, up from 11 percent in 2011, the Pew Internet Research Project says in its study released today.
They are gravitating to tablet computers and e-book readers. Some 18% of seniors own an e-book reader, and an identical 18% own a tablet computer. Taken together, 27% of older adults own a tablet, an e-book reader, or both.
This is even as older people consider them primarily “elite” devices, according to Pew. Older consumers who graduated from college and have annual incomes of $75,000 or more are three times as likely to own a tablet or e-book reader as those without college degrees and substantially lower incomes.
Still, e-book reader ownership among seniors remains lower than the national average — 24 percent of all U.S. adults own the devices. Tablet ownership among older users is about half the national average of 34 percent.
Older Americans also continue to stay relatively detached from online and mobile life, according to Pew — 41 percent do not use the Internet at all, 53 percent do not have broadband access at home, and 23 percent do not use cell phones of any kind.
Video content for a camera that’s favored by the extreme activity set tops YouTube’s Brand Channel Leaderboard.
YouTube launched, with little fanfare, a list of the top 10 highest performing, most engaging and shareable brand channels. It looked at which brands have the most watch time, repeat viewership, likes and shares, and other factors to determine which have the most active fan bases.
This from Google:
“As brands continue to blur the line between advertiser and creator, we want to recognize those brands that regularly publish content—paid or otherwise—to build an engaged fan base.”
GoPro is the No. 1 brand channel for March. Customers to its official site can narrow their search for merchandise like cameras, software, mounts and accessories based on activities like skydiving, rock climbing or wakeboarding. There’s even a bundle of products for those in the military.
Six Pack Shortcuts, No. 2 on the leaderboard, offers extreme exercise advice on how to get a ripped body and six pack abs. Interestingly, YouTube at one time suspended the account of the channel’s owner, fitness specialist Mike Chang, and blocked all the content. Google now says Six Pack Shortcuts creates content “based on who is responding to its videos to drive continued engagement.”
And the one you’ve probably not familiar with, unless you’re one of its fans? Rainbow Loom, known for its colorful rubber band bracelets.
Its introductory video has been viewed 1.6 million times, and Google says the channel has built a passionate fan base through its instructional videos and user-generated content.
The others that made the list:
You’re the person in charge of creating content that enhances your brand’s profile and makes people want to know more and share it with others. The content will be well written, engaging and shareable by your target audience.
But do your know what that target audience is?
If you’re creating a digital narrative of the joys of owning and driving a luxury sedan, what is your focus? The consumer with the income to own it? Someone with the resources to lease it? Or who likes German engineering? Or who is interested in being a second-generation owner?
You’ll need a solid understanding of your customers and what they need and want, and how your company’s product, service or brand benefits them. You’ll also need a thorough knowledge of what you can present in the content that shows what your company, your business, can offer.
There are resources available to help you determine the audience to reach out to with your content.
Google Analytics shows who’s visiting your website, how they got there, how much time they spend and more. Surveys tell you what your customers are thinking about your brand. The use of Census Bureau economic statistics can also help in plotting your audience strategy. Try online resources like articles focusing on your particular audience, or blogs that record feedback from people who communicate their opinions.
Ask yourself some questions: Is this the audience I want to reach? Will it really benefit from the written marketing content? Are you giving the consumer something new, a nugget of knowledge they did not have before? Is this message effective enough to reach this particular audience based on the information you collected?
Learn your audience. The more you know about it in advance, the more effective and receptive the content you produce can be.
Women and men are different when it comes to social media and the use of mobile devices.
Take coupons. When it comes to scanning coupons or QR codes, men are more likely to use a smartphone to scan them than women. But women are substantially more likely to follow a brand on social media. They also tend to ignore mobile text ads.
And when it comes to tasks like texting, messaging, email, taking photos and playing online games, women use their smartphones in more ways than men.
This infographic produced for FinancesOnline.com on gender differences in social media and mobile presents these facts and more. It cites research from Nielsen, ExactTarget and the Pew Research Center’s Internet Project Survey. Check it out below for some unique insight.
Chris Ducker, a British businessman best known as the “Virtual CEO,” has some advice in this segment on making your content marketing efforts effective in the marketplace. It’s just under five minutes, and his three tips are worth a look.
Feel free to let us know what you think.
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