Right now, you can still put out great content, sell it through webinars, newsletters, ezines and more increasingly memberships and site licenses, and have your audience view it on their office PC. But one advantage I now have is that I sit at the office of the Software & Information Industry Association. I can stroll down the hall and speak with, say, David LeDuc, the senior director, of public policy for SIIA. (He will be speaking at the SIPA 2013 Conference, June 5-7 in Washington, D.C.—now just a month and a half away!—with Keith Kupferschmid, SIIA general counsel.)
If you are not working on your mobile delivery, you need to get there, advises LeDuc. “The landscape is changing dramatically—it’s moving really fast,” he told me. “Sales of PCs are falling off a cliff; people just aren’t buying them anymore.” He said, yes, that may affect B2C more in the short term, “but you really need to skate to where the puck is going to be. And we know where that is—mobile.
“You need to think like an Internet company,” he added. “Because of the tablet, I’m looking for new types of content,” beyond the traditional newspaper. (See number 2 below.) Don’t get comfortable, he warned. “As I said, everything is just moving really fast.” That speed is why you must attend live conferences. In the office, we can bury our heads in work and feel like things are okay. But at SIPA 2013, your head will be met head on by new technology, new thinking, conversations with peers, and best practices—all crucial stuff.
I just read a post from the Poynter site by Tom Rosenstiel—the executive director of the American Press Institute—titled “New studies offer 5 ways publishers can capitalize on mobile trends now.” He references a report from Adobe Digital Index that global websites are now getting more traffic from tablets than smart¬phones. Given that and LeDuc’s warnings, here’s a quick recap of Rosenstiel’s five ways to make mobile more meaningful.
1. “Move aggressively to mobile immediately”—don’t wait for revenue to materialize. Americans own 50 million tablets and close to two-thirds of those owners use the devices for news.
2. “Mobile [especially tablets] deepens engagement.” This “adds to your brand not threatens it,” Rosenstiel writes. Engagement means more opportunities for monetization. People also seem to enjoy reading longer pieces on tablets and consume content in a more multisensory way.
3. “Think app — especially for the phone. Four out of every five minutes in mobile is spent on apps rather than on the browser-based Web.” He argues that now is the time to get on the limited real estate of mobile home pages.
4. “Consumers turn to ‘task-specific’ apps, not brand portals. Build apps around tasks, make them easy to use.”
5. “Content must match the strengths and time of day for each platform.” Rosenstiel dispels the platform agnostic argument. “The apps and the content should match how and when people use them,” he writes. If tablets are used most after the workday, then that content should be more analytical.
It’s still really all about engagement. Get them engaged, figure out how to monetize, and optimize campaigns across platforms. Concludes comScore: “Those who fail to devise an effective multi-platform strategy will likely be left behind.” LeDuc might put it more strongly. Hear him and many, many others—including a session titled Case Studies: What’s Working on Mobile & Tablet—at SIPA 2013.
Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline