Writing Blogs for Mobile Users

In the new world of blogging, writing for mobile readers is more important than ever before. Mobile users surpassed desktop users a couple of years ago, and the trend is only escalating. It’s easy to imagine a world where everybody has one mobile device or another. Desktop units will become more specialized – built for work or more complex kinds of fun and gaming. The everyday person will look at the digital world through a small screen they carry around in their pocket.

For the blogger, this means that it’s time to start optimizing content for the mobile viewer. It’s likely that half or more of your viewers already peer at your words through their iPhone screen. As more and more of your viewership changes over – as reliably as from video cassette to DVD, to Netflix – you don’t want to be left with an old website living in a mobile world. Here are a few ways to make your content work better for mobile.

• Focus on the Title. Titles have always been important, and mobile writing makes no exception. Make titles brief and informative, and as sexy as your platform allows. Interesting and provocative is great, as long as the content you have inside matches.

• Keep Paragraphs Short. There’s nothing worse than scrolling through unbroken piles of text on a screen the size of a playing card. Mobile users find it easier to read short bursts of text. A paragraph might be no more than three sentences. Leave it that way.

• Use Lists and Other Formatting Tricks. Lists and other page-break techniques are a mobile blog designer’s best friend. Lists make it easy to find what you’re looking for, soak up the content, and quickly move on.

• Use Quality Images. Images and videos are changing the way people use their mobile devices. Facebook has brought back the era of silent movies, as short soundless content bombards our feeds every day. Similarly, strong images communicate as much or more than words to many people. Make them a priority.

• Solid Intros, Strong Conclusions. It’s important to state your case in an opening paragraph, then sum it all up in an easy to understand snippet at the end. Everything in the middle should be good, too, of course. But without strong starts and stops, mobile viewers are likely to skip out on the middle bit entirely.

• Link Relevant Content Prominently. Mobile users navigate in totally different ways that their desktop friends do. With a desktop, you’ve got a teeny tiny cursor that can click on even the puniest link. On mobile, all you have to work with is you big dumb thumb. Make linked content big, using images or big words if possible. You’ll get a lot more clicks to related content this way.

The blogosphere is changing. Blogs are as relevant as ever, but only if they’re useful on mobile devices. Start optimizing future content to be read on mobile devices, and you’ll be more compatible with new user bases going forward. We don’t always apply these rules perfectly (this article is a case in point), but even improving little bits will give big payoffs.