I’ll write more copy for mobile websites, interactive applications and multimedia messages.
Mobile marketing is on the rise. Copywriters, editors and search engine experts must learn to adapt. I’ve discovered and used three key elements to produce effective mobile content.
1. Mobile writing must relate. I help mobile marketing agencies, advertising campaigns and interactive teams understand and value the importance of content in context. This has always been the case, of course, but now it is more critical that I connect interface design or mobile app development with short, precise copy that speaks solely to the targeted smartphone user.
Young & Rubicam’s copy man, George Gribbin, drives this point home: “A copywriter should have an understanding of people, an insight into them, a sympathy toward them.”
2. After I find out what’s important to the people I engage, I discover how they use their smartphones to access mobile apps, location-based marketing or multimedia messages. This can be determined through account planning or by regularly communicating with interface designers. I use this to write mobile copy that targets the most predictable actions.
“Obsess over customers: when given the choice between obsessing over competitors or customers, always obsess over customers.” –Jeff Bezos, CEO, Amazon.com
3. As I drill down to small words and short phrases—even smaller and shorter than what I use for website writing—I follow a mobile search strategy that specifically target queries made from handheld devices. Why? What we text with our thumbs is often less verbose than what we type with our keyboards. I research top mobile-only keyword search queries accordingly.
To recap, mobile writing is relevant to consumers, mindful of their preferences and reflective of mobile searches. AT&T expects mobile marketing spend to increase in 2012. Are you ready?
I work with an interactive team that plans for more mobile marketing in 2012. We’re stoked.
