The mobile app industry continues to grow with each year and the latest data indicate that 87% of smartphone users spend time using different apps. In 2020 alone, 218 billion apps were downloaded from Google and Apple stores, meaning there is a market out there for any type of app.
by Jessica Fender
(Image source: https://www.freepik.com/free-photo/discussing-mobile-app_5698277.htm)
Whether you develop a free-to-play mobile game or a mobile app for your business, creating engaging, original content for it is critical. Writing announcements, blog posts, and news articles that can be integrated into the mobile app is a challenge in itself.
You are working with less pixel space and limited data caps, meaning that your approach to content marketing needs to be appropriate for mobile devices. Let’s take a closer look at what you can do to create engaging content for your app and retain your users for longer in 2022.
What Do We Consider Engaging Content for a Mobile App?
When we talk about writing content for mobile apps, what are we referring to? Mobile apps are inherently closed systems and their content depends entirely on the team behind them. This gives you unprecedented freedom in determining what kind of information you want to present your users with. The content types usually considered “mobile-friendly” are:
- GUI elements (graphical user interface used for app navigation)
- Functions and features of the app (its intended use scenarios)
- Custom content (news blurbs, short-form blog posts, announcements, etc.)
Depending on your background and skillsets, you may want to use a reliable writing platform such as Authors Reward to outsource your mobile content writing. Doing so will allow you to fully focus on maintaining and developing your mobile app instead. However, keep in mind that you should still be in charge of planning, publishing, and optimizing said content. With that, let’s jump into how you can develop a solid mobile content writing strategy.
1. Decide on your Target Demographic
To get a better understanding of how you can write better content for your app, you need to have an idea of who is using your app. According to published findings, more than 25% of today’s smartphone users are in China, with the Asia Pacific making up 55% of global smartphone users. People in Asia, Europe, and the US will have drastically different expectations from the content which appears in the mobile apps they use.
This goes for blog posts, advertisements, calls to action, and even UI elements. Start your content writing process by deciding on who your audience is. Factors such as age, gender, nationality, career choice, and familial situation can be used to determine that. Once you know who you are writing content for, it will be much easier to cater to a specific user profile.
2.Adopt a Short-Form Content Approach
Given that mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets have much smaller displays than personal computers or laptops, this needs to be considered. You need to say more with fewer words when it comes to mobile content. With that, you should limit your word count on whichever type of content you are about to write beforehand.
For example, if you want to write blog posts for mobile users to read occasionally, don’t go over 600 words in length. Your UI elements will also be limited by their pixel count, so make every word count. A good idea is to rely on Google Keyword Planner to find trending keywords that you can use in your writing. This will help your mobile app’s search ranking and present users with familiar words and phrases to interact with.
3. Rely on Calls to Action for Navigation
We’ve mentioned calls to action several times by now, but what are they all about? CTAs are a type of content commonly used in marketing. They represent short phrases that are intended for users to do something after reading them. A call to action that says “Click here for 20% off” should encourage a user to click on that link and receive a discount.
You should find creative ways to implement calls to action into your mobile app to direct users into different features and functions. This is especially useful if your target audience consists of millennials and students who spend time engaged in paper writing. Students can buy essays online to get academic papers to proofread and edited by professionals who can finish a writing assignment quickly.
These kinds of users won’t dally in your app without a clear course of action and will look for a more engaging app elsewhere. Use calls to action to avoid that and retain your audience for longer.
4. Use Visuals Sparingly to Increase Load Times
Mobile app usability is all about speed and low bandwidth requirements. Presenting your users with text-only content won’t help you keep them around for long. Mobile users want to see flashy visual content which will capture their attention for longer.
However, that same content can cause your app to load more slowly and require more data to be downloaded. You must optimize your multimedia properly before integrating it into the app. You can pair your writing content with visuals by baking in catchphrases, sales pitches, and calls to action into images, videos, and animation. Use rich visuals sparingly to keep the focus of your app on its primary usability rather than unnecessary visual clutter.
5. Test your Content for Usability Before Publishing It
Finally, you should make content testing a part of your mobile content writing strategy. You can never know how content will appear on your mobile app until it’s integrated into it. The same infographic or animation may appear differently on smartphones and tablets for example.
You also need to take Android and iOS differences into consideration since building apps for both operating systems varies to an extent. If your content appears compatible with the existing mobile app framework, don’t hesitate to schedule it for publishing. Rushing into publishing new content without testing it however may backfire, so avoid it if at all possible.
Wrapping Up
As you can imagine, writing content for your mobile app involves more than “writing”. Your mobile app is an amalgamation of various features, code, and functionality – written content is only an element of the whole product.
Be that as it may, writing good copy for your mobile app can increase its appeal and bring in more users. Take the tips we’ve discussed into consideration and outsource your content writing if you don’t have a dedicated copywriter. Once your content is live and users react to it, you will have ideas on how to create more content based on feedback.
Author’s bio. Jessica Fender is a professional content creator, copywriter, and editorial manager on Paperangel. Her experience in digital marketing and professional development has enabled her to write better articles, essays, and case studies on these topics. Jessica enjoys reading personal development lit and listening to podcasts.
Share this article on