We are living in the age of online platforms, and most brands are increasingly seeing the value of having a mobile App as part of broadening their reach and tapping into the new age consumer.
Having a mobile app for your business gives you the power to influence how and when your app members consume the content you share with them, and it also gives you the control to protect your app member's data as we gravitate to the age of POPI.
Like every touchpoint for your brand such as your website or social media, the app needs a clear content strategy that is aligned to your business goals and objectives whilst staying true to the essence of who you are as a brand.
Having an app is an amazing addition to your consumer engagement strategy. That strategy needs a clear and concise content strategy to support it. When this is done right, you will experience an increase in app downloads, app registrations, and member engagement - thus adding value to your consumer engagement strategy.
Here's a summary guideline that can add benefit to your own content strategy:
1. Set out clear goals
Setting goals is the starting point in any content endeavour you choose to undertake. Having a goal helps you create a foundational structure of where you want to go content wise and how the journey will look.
Even the simplest content strategies have set goals - this is what sets the tone, and informs the type of content that needs to be created, thus helping create content that will an impact on your app members. The goals of your content strategy will vary, and might include:
Increase the in-app Conversation and Channels member count
Brand/app awareness
Increase app downloads
Increase app registrations
Greater user retention rate
Increase app member engagement.
These are just a few examples — when you create content, bear these in mind throughout, and your strategy will have greater resonance as a result.
2. Clearly define your app target audience
One of the most important principles of building a successful content strategy is to know your app members. This forms the foundation of every good mobile app content strategy too.
What is important is seeing your app members as personalities for whom you can create tailored content for unique needs and interests. For instance, if your app members prefer a certain social platform over another, you could add that site as a provider on your Smashboard to see and respond to all messages received.
Another great way to gain an understanding of who your audience is and what makes them tick is to create surveys geared to give insights into their personality.
3. Write content with a tangible hook
As content creatives, we often produce our content with a consideration of the medium on which the content is being consumed. Because the app is on a mobile device, we might assume that most app members are less likely to engage with lengthy blog posts.
That assumption is a bit far-fetched because app members or content consumers in online platforms are quite happy to read long-form content via a mobile app if it is engaging. To provide a teaser, share a summary of the article linking to your website so that you can kill two birds with one stone. If you want your audience to engage with the content from the first paragraph to the last word, you need to entice them with interesting content throughout. One way of maximising this would be to add content that is trending in another platforms.
4. Deliver fresh and diverse content
As an app content creative, a vital intention is to keep your app members coming back in the app and spend time consuming the content in the app.
This means you need to be creative in the pillars you choose to focus on in terms on the content you decide to publish to your audience. The precedence here is when app members keep getting exposed to the same content repeatedly, they become disengaged and, as a result, they decide not to come back in the app or read or listen to your podcast for a few seconds and disconnect from the app. The best strategies lead the charge in diverse content pillars to keep your app members stimulated.
The best content strategies embrace a diverse array of content formats to keep audiences stimulated and engaged, and your mobile app’s content strategy is no different.
Some of the content pillars you can get started with for your mobile app. Example include:
Product sneak peeks: mobile apps are a terrific way to source app member feedback. Offer teasers for new products and invite customer input via in-app surveys. Here you can partner with a potential advertiser to give them brand awareness.
Product tutorials: value is key in your mobile app content strategy, and how-to and explainer videos are perfect for delivering that straight to your audience.
More on content pillars here: Creating Killer Content Pillars
5. Use metrics to guide and hone your content strategy
One of the key benefits of having an app is the fact that it gives you real-time insightful result to report on and, in this case, helps you create content that is heavily consumed.
For example, if one live podcast gets more plays, find out what the discussion around that podcast was about and use that as a pillar for creating content. Better yet, use the four most-played content as a foundational pillar for the next round of podcasts you add.
If your audience engage heavily with news posts in the news channel, take note of what news content they reacted to mostly and in future instead of just having a post, include a podcast of it and it link on your socials.
Lastly, if you are uncertain about how to create an app content strategy, contact us - we can help!
