PRMan

Shrewd readers may have noticed my blog going mobile last week courtesy of the WPtouch wordpress plugin (thanks guys). This is an important change for me and the media in general. Not because my blog is amazing, but because of the increasing importance of mobile in delivering content to readers.

Mobile penetration in the UK is huge and turnover of devices is similarly high. This means more people are accessing services over increasingly advanced phones and according to the GSMA accessing 6.7 billion web pages a year – and this is only going to rise.

The trouble is that while most national and international news outlets are fully invested in mobile, the trade press is severely lagging. I tested this with the key IT and new media publications as those catering for a large proportion of ‘early adopters’. The results of were as follows in terms of those providing a mobile-layout site:

Computing – yes
Computer Weekly – no
IT Pro – no
Computer Business Review – no
Information Age – no

New Media Age – no
New Media Knowledge – no
Social Media Today – no
Mashable – yes (and very nice indeed)

This is a pretty bleak picture. Of course it takes time and money to create mobile-ready sites, but it’s going to be worth it. We can pretty much bet on the fact that content will be accessed on two core screen sizes for some time going forward – one big and one small. As a content outlet, the mobile device is only going to increase in popularity and this will definitely justify the expense.

What am I suggesting they do? Though iPhone and other apps have been pretty successful for the large news outlets (read Guardian, BBC etc), it’s not the ideal way to go for trade-focused publications. The reasons for this are levels of output, and importance of content. Most professionals get their trade-focused information from numerous news sources and are unlikely to want to download a new app for each different publication. The BBC is, of course, another matter.

The most important thing is understanding the most important routes via which an audience wants to access content. RSS is great for this and I use Google reader religiously. But the one issue with this is you lose the personality of the publication and the added interest afforded by photos. That’s why being mobile-ready is so important. Check out the Guardian on your mobile for example – it maintains its brand and interest but makes it a hell of a lot easier to access content on a small screen. You have got the possibility to deliver further mobile-enhanced content for example direct podcast downloads and videos.

In short, the opportunity to create a really strong mobile content platform is huge and should be grabbed with both hands. Doing it on a blog is easy, doing it for a trade publication is a bit more difficult but clearly worth the effort.

Check out some great stats on mobile here from Dan Zambonini, Technical Director of Box UK.