Over time, content creators will discover which apps, eBooks or services their audience will purchase and use on their smart phones and iPads. However, savvy publishers and content marketers are discovering ways to get their content onto mobile devices with approaches that help drive business metrics and meet organizational objectives -- and not by selling 99-cent apps.
Here are just a few ways to get your content on your customers' and members' smart phones and pad devices:
RSS: I know, I know. Those initials again. But the content you are posting on your blog and on Twitter and on Flickr is available as an RSS feed. And your audience can now subscribe to that RSS feed using some of the iPad's most popular apps, including Pulse, Reeder and Flipboard (see next).
Flipboard: If you have an iPad, you've likely discovered the popular app, Flipboard (soon it will be available for Android devices). Input your Flickr, Facebook or Twitter account information, and it will provide you a magazine-like interface filled with news stories, videos and photos suggested by your friends and followers. Flipboard now has a feature that allows users to subscribe to specific RSS feeds by synching Flipboard with Google Reader.
Instapaper: Encourage your readers to save and read your content (in a reader-friendly format) on their mobile devices by adding an Instapaper "Read Later" button to each article. (We're adding one in a soon-to-be-launched redesign of our site.)
eBooks: The popularity of iPads and Kindles is showing that long-form reading may not be something one likes to do while sitting at their computer. But while reclined in a Lazy Boy reading an iPad, it may be. Collections of articles or theme-oriented special groupings of blog posts can be the basis of a great eBook strategy.
Digital magazines: If what you want is a means to distribute an existing magazine or newsletter, perhaps a digital magazine is the way to go. Nxtbook, Zinio and others have developed apps and various approaches to provide ways that allow you to get versions of your magazines onto mobile devices. If free and simple is what you want, offering your publication as a PDF can be a solution (and PDFs can be distributed via RSS).
Coming soon, there will be an entirely new ecosystem of content distribution approaches -- including a couple of new startups that are generating some pre-launch buzz. We'll be following those developments on this blog, so stay tuned.
