Content is King on Mobile: Staying Relevant as Mobile Eats the World
A few weeks ago, a16z partner Benedict Evans published a deck with his contemporary take on Mark Andreessen’s oft-cited software is eating the world. Much of this insightful, data-rich piece emphasizes the inevitable force and influence mobile is playing in our lives as we surpass 2.5 billion smartphones, with a clear path to 5 billion worldwide. Beyond the sheer volume of smart devices globally, mobile recently surpassed desktop for total internet use and search traffic. In a relatively short time, mobile has ascended to dominance as a platform for consumption with no slowdown in site.
Few would question the importance and explosive growth of mobile, but the sheer scale and influence of mobile as a medium cannot be understated. The challenges in the years ahead will be less about being ‘mobile enabled’ so to speak, and more about how to stay relevant and engaging as brands battle it out for their share of the mobile screen. In the months and years to come, brands will be faced with the opportunity to build internal strategies and teams around owning their mobile content and capturing audience engagement. Increasingly though, there will be a clear distinction between brands and the amount of screen time they can command. Those who remain relevant, engaging and timely will dominate brands who struggle to keep pace with their content-rich competitors.
Just as platforms such as web, and channels such as social media before it, content and relevance is what separates the winners from the losers in this reality. Social solutions like Hootsuite (and other social media publishing tools) have enabled brands to be relevant with their content, staying responsive to feedback and facilitating a dialogue between brands and customers. Winners were ‘early and frequent’ as they developed an active social voice with their audience.
While much mobile content is consumed on mobile via social channels, in the world of apps and mobile optimized web, staying relevant is more of a challenge. The current approach commands more resources and relies heavily on hourly-based services from development agencies or internal development teams. In addition to the costs associated with this approach, the time to develop and deploy native mobile app content undermines a brands ability to capitalize on the type of timely and relevant content opportunities that emerge daily.
Winning brands will need to act and execute fast. They will need to be able to iterate, and create a dialogue with their customers and fans without being encumbered by the time and costs of traditional mobile development. Simply having an app or mobile optimized site is the ‘just being there’ part of the battle. With today's ‘I want it now’ generational expectations, that’s not enough. How will you continue to remain relevant and top of mind as consumers' insatiable appetite for relevant content is satisfied elsewhere?
Content is King.
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