Hitchhikers Guide to Mobile Content Creation: Pay Attention, Stupid!

Reader SMS Text News reader, Olly, is back today with his perspective on one of the key issues with mobile content: Getting consumers to pay attention.

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I have a confession to make: I’m addicted to Google Reader. OK, not that big of confession, and obviously it’s an affliction that is shared by millions of people (particularly readers of blogs and news sites such as this one). I honestly am on Google Reader’s site a good portion of my day, both through whatever browser I have open (work or home), and through the mobile version (probably my single most visited mobile site).

So this morning I was on the bus, and I was checking GReader on my N95 before I got to work. Partly this was my addiction talking, but also because I wanted to get some of it out of the way before I actually got into the office so that it wasn’t a total productivity killer, knowing that I had a very busy day ahead of me (now of course I’m at work writing this instead — so much for productivity!). And as I scanned through GReader, I realized something: there are so many stories that I’m apt to skip on my N95 that I might actually have taken the time to read on the full desktop version, and do you know why? The hook just wasn’t there. Allow me to explain.

Think about walking into a bookstore and looking for a book, but not having any preconceived notion of what you are going to buy. You are a blank slate, just looking for something to read. Unless you have a book in mind, or have been recommended some titles, how is it that you decide exactly what you are going to buy? Easy: the title does it for you. Take this example: I’m currently re-reading Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (I’m actually reading it on my N95 rather than in hard copy, but that’s another topic). Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is one of those titles that immediately grabs you if you are at all interested in Sci-Fi, Space Travel, etc. Even if you’ve never heard of it, you could conceivably read that title and veer towards it on an end cap in a bookstore. It’s interesting, and it elicits a reaction immediately. But what if that same book had been called “The Travels of Arthur Dent”. Would you be likely to stop and take a look? Probably not.

This gets to the heart of mobile content versus PC/Desktop content, and in particular gets to something that enough content providers aren’t taking seriously: as we become a more connected world, and more and more people begin to process content in it’s mobile format, those that are providing that content must become more sensitive to the “hook and grab”. I just read yesterday that the iPhone has become the fourth most used web platform. Fourth! After Windows, OSX, and Linux (the desktop varieties of all), a mobile device has risen to prominence in web analytics. And with that, I’m sure a ton of new RSS subscribers are using GReader (whose iPhone interface looks fantastic from what I’ve seen).

With that in mind, think about this: if a title says “new LG phone at Mobile World Congress” in my GReader mobile list, I might be apt to skip over it — frankly I don’t care about LG phones. But if the title said “LG Brings Their Smartphone Game to MWC in Full Force, Nokia Beware”, I would be much more likely to take a look — after all, I care a lot about smartphones! The content doesn’t change — it’s the same story — but with the second title they’ve hooked me in more. And it’s not just about the fact that I care about smartphones either; with the second title they’ve put a provocative challenge right up front… just by their choice of words!

A good example of a publication that seems to get this (or just does it well by accident at least), is the Register. I almost invariably read their stories no matter WHAT medium I’m on (blackberry, N95, laptop, etc). On their front page at this very moment, a title that caught my eye immediatly: “T-Mobile Germany Schafts Nokia” Their titles are always interesting enough (often a pun or play on words) to draw me in — sometimes even to content that I might not otherwise care about!! Playing to people’s natural curiosity is an essential part of good writing for mobile content.

With reading blogs and news on Google Reader’s desktop version, at least the way I have mine setup (to show a quick preview of the story, which is the default I believe), I might be able to scan the first couple sentences and see that I’m interested — so the hook doesn’t need to be right up front. But with mobile content, I can’t stress this enough, the hook has to be set before I even realize it’s there. The best authors know that the title of the book (and often the cover art) are the first thing that we see, and therefore need to be the biggest draw. Blog and news authors ought to be paying attention to the same as the amount of “at a glance data” gets compressed.

As our data consumption becomes more mobile, many of us who watch the industry tend to focus on the nuts and bolts of it all: HSDPA, LTE, browser technology, etc, etc. But in the end, no matter how far that technology comes, if the content just isn’t up to snuff — or at the very least tailored towards mobility and mobile readers — it doesn’t really matter whether I’m browsing over EDGE or HSDPA. If you can’t hook me in up front, I’ve already moved on no matter what speed that movement is at.

-olly

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Nice one Olly!