Mobile Marketing Strategies

With the recent Google Hummingbird algorithm update mobile traffic access and strategies have been in the forefront of advanced business planning. How is mobile marketing different from regular SEO and traffic generation methods? Here's a look at the new mobile-friendly content marketing.

In the past the main approach was to make some content and format for the big computer screen and then scale it down somehow for the mobile screen. However, more than half the searches are now done from mobile devices, so the new direction in content is to think mobile first.

Just breaking paragraphs into smaller sentence numbers is only the beginning. Now it is more likely to see single sentences instead of paragraphs (my high school English teacher would not be pleased). There is more than one image and spread out through the article or post, usually Thumbnail size. As you can see the changes are in both content and format. Understandably the post must be shorter. No one except Kindle book readers scroll through long passages these days. The challenge is to shorten the length but to include as much quality content - sort of like writing a clear, understandable poem.

Here are some more observations by Jason DeMers, CEO of AudienceBloom in a recent article published on LinkedIn. He points out that the exception to the short content rule might be a post that is so gripping and interesting that the reader can't put it down throughout the whole ride on the train to work (would it be that everyone has the luxury of train rides instead of boring car commutes). He also points out that it's important to focus on catchy headlines (always important, no matter what the audience) and the first few sentences as well as the summary paragraph if it exists.

Understand your audience’s mobile habits 

It’s amazing how many conversations about mobile strategies and content marketing in general happen in the absence of audience data. Can you answer the following questions about your customers and prospects?

• What percentage of your audience accesses your site on mobile devices?
• Are they using tablets or smartphones?
• What activities are they doing on your site, independently and as compared with your overall traffic?
• What content are they accessing – by topic and by format?
• How much time do they spend on your site? An audience with an average of 10 minutes is different than an audience with an average of 90 seconds. It’s all about attention span.
• Do they consume visual content?
• What other sites, social media platforms, and activities are they doing on mobile?

The greater the depth in terms of your understanding of your audience’s mobile habits, the more compelling your content will be. But specifically, understanding the makeup of their mobile universe will help you create content that feels native – rather than retroactively shoehorned to fit in.

To read more, click on this link.

Being mindful of mobile viewers, this post needs to end now. Want to know more about Mr. DeMers' ideas? You can find his book with this link: The Definitive Guide to Marketing Your Business Online.