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Internet Trends Report 2011 Shows Optimizing Content for Mobile is a Growing Necessity
The 2011 version of the annual Internet Trends Report was presented earlier this week by Mary Meeker of Venture Capitalist Firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB) at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco. Her deck contains stats which any online marketing or PR professional will find useful, but looking at the deck, one slide (#18 in the deck) springs to attention, as it tells how traffic from mobile devices to the two most popular social networking sites, Facebook and Twitter, now stand at 33% and 55% globally, and this is further expected to grow as smartphone and tablet sales continue unabated.
Her next slide in the presentation shows that mobile search is also growing rapidly:
What then, does this mean to us as PR people – storytellers since the profession first started and now of the digital age? I think that it means we now have to start taking the mobile platform seriously, and start thinking of the best ways to tell stories via a mobile device. With the growing number of mobile internet users, what is the best way to deliver content to reach people on these platforms?
My gut instinct is that our PR content strategies have traditionally been catered towards PC users. I refer to a post I shared some time back about Facebook-specific tactics on when to post, best times to post, post length and more, and when I re-read it, it seems like these recommendations are based on research data garnered from users who access these sites through a desktop or laptop. With mobile traffic growing and expected to grow, I feel that these trends will change and as PR practitioners (and all content creators also take note!) we should anticipate and develop our own strategies on how to best reach people through the mobile platform, while at the same time not neglecting people on the laptop / desktop.
With that, here are some of my initial thoughts:
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Post timings: Facebook recommends posting between 7– 8 a.m., 10–11 a.m. or 4–5 p.m, but most people won’t be checking their mobile devices at this time because they’re working so it might also make sense to time posts towards the latter part of the day when people have just gotten off work. This would apply for Twitter as well.
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Post length: Facebook’s recommendation was 4-or-5-line postings for maximum effect, but think about the user reading this off a mobile device with less screen real-estate. It might make sense to shorten your posts to about 2-3 line postings to cater to mobile users.
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Video vs. Sound: Video now forms a large part of content strategy. However, with video requiring more bandwidth, loading times may turn off mobile users. A suggestion would be to replace videos with podcasts; or have low-res versions of video for mobile users.
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Microsites: Avoid Flash as much as possible, and have a mobile-optimized version of your site.
What other recommendations do you have on better optimizing your content to reach mobile users?
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