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A Book Apart #8
Content Strategy for Mobile
You don’t get to decide which platform or device your customers use to access your content: they do.
Mobile isn’t just smartphones, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you are on the move. It’s a proliferation of devices, platforms, and screensizes — from the tiniest “dumb” phones to the desktop web. How can you be sure that your content will work everywhere, all the time?
Karen McGrane will teach you everything you need to get your content onto mobile devices (and more). You’ll first gather data to help you make the case for a mobile strategy, then learn how to publish flexibly to multiple channels. Along the way, you'll get valuable advice on adapting your workflow to a world of emerging devices, platforms, screen sizes, and resolutions. And all in the less time than it takes you to fly from New York to Chicago.
Mobile isn’t just smartphones, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you are on the move. It’s a proliferation of devices, platforms, and screensizes — from the tiniest “dumb” phones to the desktop web. How can you be sure that your content will work everywhere, all the time?
Karen McGrane will teach you everything you need to get your content onto mobile devices (and more). You’ll first gather data to help you make the case for a mobile strategy, then learn how to publish flexibly to multiple channels. Along the way, you'll get valuable advice on adapting your workflow to a world of emerging devices, platforms, screen sizes, and resolutions. And all in the less time than it takes you to fly from New York to Chicago.
165 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2012
29 people are currently reading
933 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews
December 19, 2012
I wish everyone at my company would read this book...
February 21, 2013
This book is the most cogent argument I've yet seen for the separation of form from content. Karen McGrane explains how and why individual fields of content should be annotated with information about what they contain to enable them to be used in a variety of contexts, letting the individual devices determine how to display what is needed rather than specifying it when content is created.
Content strategy tends to be a bit dry, and this book is no exception, but McGrane does a good job of advocating for making all content available in a mobile context.
Some more things found inside this book are:
Content strategy tends to be a bit dry, and this book is no exception, but McGrane does a good job of advocating for making all content available in a mobile context.
Some more things found inside this book are:
June 14, 2013
Typically practical, thorough and useful handbook to making your content go mobile.
It’s written in the breezy, cheery conversational style common to many content strategy and web books, with facts, links and example.
It’s actually almost a ‘self-help’ book intended to assist content strategists, editors and web managers over the hurdle of making their content responsive, and is full of inspiring wee anecdotes and pep talks to get them going.
In fact the message is that going responsive is actually the best thing to happen to content for ages – it’s difficult to argue with data that shows mobile and tablet access hurtling upwards, and the advice is that content strategists should leap to seize this opportunity and use it to force the organisation they work for to just make their content as good as it can be, thus solving all sort so other pesky content problems and web in fell swoop.
Looking forward to putting it into practice!
December 18, 2012
Loads of useful information in here and short enough to read in one sitting. I really love everything I've read from the List Apart series so far. For a book this short, it's hard to really dig into the hard stuff of how to influence change as a content strategist. There are some huge challenges to address in terms of processes, tools and organisational culture but it's great that awareness is building and a critical mass is forming.
March 21, 2013
In this sort work Karen McGrane makes sort work (all pun intended) of what can be an overwhelming subject. Namely, how do I reach my customer/clients where they live? Along the way, she also makes a well presented argument for a content-centered workflow, which is the key to the holy grail of write-once-and-publish-everywhere. This book is worth reading and certainly worth having in your back pocket if you're a content evangelist.
December 9, 2012
Karen McGrane doesn't soft-pedal anything. She takes on conventional design wisdom in this excellent book—specifically the idea that you can write and design for a more task-oriented "mobile use case." Not so, she says; your user needs to access your whole website, from any device. It's our job to give it to them.
November 23, 2012
Anyone who works with content that may go online (read: anyone who works with content) should take an evening to read this book to get forward-thinking on structuring information architecture AND workflows/organizations to make content usable anywhere.
Oh, and try to get your executives to read and grok it. Good luck with that.
Oh, and try to get your executives to read and grok it. Good luck with that.
January 10, 2015
Boring ..
As if he read a bunch of online articles and trying to structure lengthy paragraphs around them!
Book repeats now and again that you should go mobile .. u must go mobile .. mobile is good .. metadata is the future .. structure your content ..
design ur content to be deployed everywhere
This can be summarized in another long online article
As if he read a bunch of online articles and trying to structure lengthy paragraphs around them!
Book repeats now and again that you should go mobile .. u must go mobile .. mobile is good .. metadata is the future .. structure your content ..
design ur content to be deployed everywhere
This can be summarized in another long online article
December 31, 2012
Karen McGrane is one of my favorite people.
January 3, 2013
Great meditation on the challenges of multi-platform content production. Really actionable advice - looking forward to seeing how practical the proposed approach is.
January 2, 2013
Not even kidding when I say this book should be considered for our campus' "Common Read" selection next year. Thanks & congrats to Karen McGrane!
February 8, 2013
Learned a lot here about the thinking behind building adaptive content structures. This book is a necessary companion to anyone building large scale responsive web sites.
Read
October 3, 2013Extremely valuable book!
July 9, 2018
Highly recommend this book for communicators. Wow!
May 31, 2024
"Don't waste money on advertising if you don't have a mobile website to back it up." (p.9)
"There's no such thing as writing for mobile. There's only good writing. You should think about how to improve the quality of all your text. Once you've done so, there's no need to change the substance or the style to make it more appropriate for mobile." (p.123)
"Knowing the type of device the user is holding doesn't tell you anything about the user's intent. Knowing someone's location doesn't tell you anything about her goals. You can't make assumptions about what the user wants to do simply because she has a smaller screen. In fact, all you really know is: she has a smaller screen." (p.19)
"The reason a separate mobile website is dangerous is that, in general, you want to avoid creating multiple versions of your website. It's called forking, and it's a forking nightmare from a maintenance perspective." (p.35)
"Adaptive content is content that is flexible, so it can adapt to different screen sizes, and can be presented in different formats as appropriate for the device. What's the secret to this flexibility? Why, it's having more structure! Adaptive content has structure and metadata attached to it, which helps it figure out what to do when it winds up on the all those different platforms and devices." (p.45)
Revisions for Mobile include:
- Be concise: aim to get your main point across on a single screen, which is approximately 100 words. Ruthlessly delete unnecessary words.
- Write headings as links: assume that headings and subheads could be repurposed as navigation. Make them actionable and fill them with trigger words - words that users themselves would say if asked to describe what you're looking for.
- Write the first sentence as a summary: assume that the first line of the page or section could be repurposed as a navigation summary. Put the main idea and important keywords in the first sentence.
- One topic per paragraph: when readers scan the page, they look at initial sentences for main ideas. If additional ideas are presented in a single paragraph, users are likely to skip over them. (p.105)
► On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King - writing process, editing
► Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench - Shakespeare, acting, biography
► A Manual of Writer's Tricks: Essential Advice for Fiction and Nonfiction Writers by David L. Carroll - writing tips & tools
► Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark - writing tips
► Writers Dreaming: 26 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process by Naomi Epel - writing & dreaming, famous writers
► The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity by Louise DeSalvo - writing process & tools
"There's no such thing as writing for mobile. There's only good writing. You should think about how to improve the quality of all your text. Once you've done so, there's no need to change the substance or the style to make it more appropriate for mobile." (p.123)
"Knowing the type of device the user is holding doesn't tell you anything about the user's intent. Knowing someone's location doesn't tell you anything about her goals. You can't make assumptions about what the user wants to do simply because she has a smaller screen. In fact, all you really know is: she has a smaller screen." (p.19)
"The reason a separate mobile website is dangerous is that, in general, you want to avoid creating multiple versions of your website. It's called forking, and it's a forking nightmare from a maintenance perspective." (p.35)
"Adaptive content is content that is flexible, so it can adapt to different screen sizes, and can be presented in different formats as appropriate for the device. What's the secret to this flexibility? Why, it's having more structure! Adaptive content has structure and metadata attached to it, which helps it figure out what to do when it winds up on the all those different platforms and devices." (p.45)
Revisions for Mobile include:
- Be concise: aim to get your main point across on a single screen, which is approximately 100 words. Ruthlessly delete unnecessary words.
- Write headings as links: assume that headings and subheads could be repurposed as navigation. Make them actionable and fill them with trigger words - words that users themselves would say if asked to describe what you're looking for.
- Write the first sentence as a summary: assume that the first line of the page or section could be repurposed as a navigation summary. Put the main idea and important keywords in the first sentence.
- One topic per paragraph: when readers scan the page, they look at initial sentences for main ideas. If additional ideas are presented in a single paragraph, users are likely to skip over them. (p.105)
► On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King - writing process, editing
► Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent by Judi Dench - Shakespeare, acting, biography
► A Manual of Writer's Tricks: Essential Advice for Fiction and Nonfiction Writers by David L. Carroll - writing tips & tools
► Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer by Roy Peter Clark - writing tips
► Writers Dreaming: 26 Writers Talk About Their Dreams and the Creative Process by Naomi Epel - writing & dreaming, famous writers
► The Art of Slow Writing: Reflections on Time, Craft, and Creativity by Louise DeSalvo - writing process & tools
February 4, 2014
This book focuses on the processes and organization behind putting together a website that is fully cross-platform, optimized for both desktop and mobile. While it doesn't always seem like it should be a lot of effort, this book goes into how some of the best practices can require some changes in the workflow of organizations compared to what they do now.
Though the book doesn't focus on the type of content we have at Goodreads, there are a lot of similarities, and there are certainly lessons we can take from this book to apply going forward. There's not much technical content, but that makes this book have a wider appeal: it's an easy read for anyone in the content or technical side of an organization.
Recommended for anyone working on a website that supports both desktop and mobile (which is everyone working on a website... right??)
Though the book doesn't focus on the type of content we have at Goodreads, there are a lot of similarities, and there are certainly lessons we can take from this book to apply going forward. There's not much technical content, but that makes this book have a wider appeal: it's an easy read for anyone in the content or technical side of an organization.
Recommended for anyone working on a website that supports both desktop and mobile (which is everyone working on a website... right??)
August 29, 2016
Of all the books from the A Book Apart series I've read so far (that's eight of them), I found that the ones about content strategy are the hardest to read. It usually takes me double the time to finish them.
I suspect it's a personal thing. Maybe it's because I haven't had the chance to work on a project that involves content strategy and I'm not that invested in it.
This one, however, was the most informative.
It made it clear that content strategy is very important and that adaptive content is what we should aim for. The examples made me think of my (usually bad) user experience with browsing websites on mobile.
Recommended for anyone who wants to make websites with better user experience across all the devices.
I suspect it's a personal thing. Maybe it's because I haven't had the chance to work on a project that involves content strategy and I'm not that invested in it.
This one, however, was the most informative.
It made it clear that content strategy is very important and that adaptive content is what we should aim for. The examples made me think of my (usually bad) user experience with browsing websites on mobile.
Recommended for anyone who wants to make websites with better user experience across all the devices.
July 22, 2016
I read this recently on a quest to finish all the ABA books. I've always loved this series of books but in recent years failed to keep up with the speed with which they release new stuff. It's quite funny to read about the paradigms and ideas that were around 4 years ago and seeing that nowadays most of these have become common sense. Especially the content creation/distribution space has evolved a lot since 2012 and it's great to see that today there are solid and affordable services that help you apply the strategies discussed in this book without building your entire tech stack from scratch.
January 12, 2018
Maybe I was expecting something else, maybe it was the author's style. All combined this would be useful for people 5 years ago (when the book was originally published) that have very limited insight into or experience with information architecture or with writing content. I imagine people in the marketing department of a big US corporation trying to decide if they should have a mobile website.
Definitely not very useful for me in 2018.
Note: My rating of this book is based on the number of highlights I made while reading this book and the perceived magnitude of impact the information from this book has or would likely have on my behavior.
Definitely not very useful for me in 2018.
Note: My rating of this book is based on the number of highlights I made while reading this book and the perceived magnitude of impact the information from this book has or would likely have on my behavior.
October 18, 2020
В книжці доволі багато води, як на свій невеликий об'єм, інколи банальну річ розжовують 5 сторінок, про що можна було сказати двома реченнями. Практично в кожному розділі повторюється, що потрібно переходити на мобільний контент, структурувати контент, контент для мобільних та мобільні це добро, метадані рішають.
Частина інформації на 2020 рік втратила актуальність. Цікавими виявились лінки в кінці книги, хоча більшість з них вже не живі, проте тепер знаю ще один спосіб, як можна адаптувати таблицю для мобільних.
Частина інформації на 2020 рік втратила актуальність. Цікавими виявились лінки в кінці книги, хоча більшість з них вже не живі, проте тепер знаю ще один спосіб, як можна адаптувати таблицю для мобільних.
December 3, 2014
Short, sweet, and to the point, but filled with a ton of useful infoformation to help guide your organization's (or your client's) content strategy. The "for Mobile" bit is something of a misnomer, as the author explains, as it would be folly to pursue a separate content strategy for mobile platforms. But "for mobile" is a very useful canard to get stakeholders thinking "outside the box" that their desktop CMS current forces them into!
January 28, 2013
Should actually be called "Content Strategy for Multi-Channel Publishing". Will show you why mobile is only the first step in a coming multi-channel content revolution and how you should prepare your content for that.
Number one advice: Don't put everything in one big blob, instead use content packages.
Number one advice: Don't put everything in one big blob, instead use content packages.
August 21, 2013
McGrane's book is the definitive guide to why your business needs to make mobile strategy a priority. She provides compelling arguments for mobile being more than a subset of data from your 'desktop' site and puts focus on creating datasets built for reusability on any platform that you may wish to publish them.
April 11, 2013
3.5 - a good book with solid advice about optimizing content for mobile. Some sections seemed obvious for someone working in thus industry, but overall worth reading. Main point: don't "guess" what your mobile users will want to see content wise- they'll probably want to see a lot of things on their phones that you won't guess, and then they'll be frustrated.
September 1, 2013
If you have not read other books about content strategy, content modeling, responsive web design and such, you will probably give this 5 stars. It's actually really great, but duplicates things I have read in CS books written by McGrane's friends. It will do much to help you make the case if you are trying to talk with the higher ups about why you don't want to build a mobile site.
November 30, 2014
A clear read with lots of good examples. Some of the things I've suggested for our CMS were keys points of hers: previewing the mobile version of a page, having objects separated for different treatments in different locations rather than being embedded, not cropping important parts of images, and having all the functions available on desktop also available on mobile.
Read
March 28, 2014Excellent book on content strategy. Don't let the title fool you, it's *not* just about mobile. McGrane gives excellent advice on how to structure and manage your content to accommodate myriad devices and publishing channels. A must read for anyone working in the digital world.
February 21, 2013
This was a quick, fantastic read that left me feeling really excited about where content strategy is going. I'm sold on the thinking, but still a bit unsure of how to actually achieve some of the CMS-driven changes. I'd love to take a workshop to put these ideas into action with a bit of guidance.
March 30, 2015
Good book about adaptive content, but an incomplete book about mobile content strategy, with a terrible section on mobile SEO. Full review at Marketing Land: http://marketingland.com/book-review-...
May 9, 2013
An awesome book, filled with practical advice and useful examples. The author speaks from personal experience and it shows. It references useful studies and articles from all over the web, it quotes people who know what they are talking about.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 50 reviews