David Cohn addresses Mobile Me & You UNL Conference on how to design content in new ways for mobile
Day by day, mobile devices continue to gain momentum and carry a more significant weight in the ever-changing realm of journalism. Thus, designing content for mobile in journalism has become all the more important.
David Cohn, the senior director of Advance Publications and the founder of mobile media outlet and broadcast company Al Jazeera +, spoke on how to design unique content in new ways specifically for mobile devices at the first ever Mobile Me & You UNL conference on Friday, Oct. 30 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln Union.
Because today’s society is using computers, tablets and phones all in different ways, the user is consuming content in different ways across multiple platforms. As a result, all platforms need to have unique, user-friendly content that can grasp and hold the attention of the audience, but no platform has been growing more than mobile.
“Mobile devices such as phones are becoming a very intimate device,” Cohn said at his breakout discussion seminar Friday morning. “We users feel a story.”
Because the users latch on to a story emotionally, choices need to be made on the mobile platform how to engage the audience and captivate them.
“The choices at the platform level define the type of media produced,” Cohn said. “Media companies need to become more like technology companies.”
Cohn had to do that in his own life with his company Al Jazeera, where the challenge was how their video on TV as a broadcast company changed with social media.
“We need to be tailoring things for social media,” Cohn said. “We have to change the way we are telling stories.”
One of things at AJ + has done this is through platform intelligence. The company has created different types of content for different social media outlets.
“We are picturing people in their apps,” Cohn said. “It’s all about the audience.”
Cohn then outlined AJ+ with its stylized templates for efficiency. The emphasis was to include the text plus the link plus an organized quote template. The organized quote template adds significant weight to the brand’s content and allows the user to be lured into the content produced.
“The reader is in control of how the content is viewed,” Cohn said. “You control what you want as a user, but it depends on how the content is structured.”
And how the content is structured across all platforms is vital, but perhaps most so in mobile. This is why the ‘classic news article’ needs to be restructured Cohn pointed out in order to contain the audience’s attention.
“Don’t panic,” Cohn said. “There is a lot to figure out. Structured content is powerful and positive because we have access to people and their personal wants. Your news is intimate in a way never before. Your news impacts a person’s life like never before.”
