According to new research, CEOs are loving the idea of mobile.

The CEOs in the survey – Media CEOs Look to Smartphones, Tablets for Digital Growth – feel like mobile devices will have the biggest impact in the future. While this is true it’s not really the device that will be the big difference in the future.

A little further down in the article you’ll see that the focus shifts back to where it belongs: the content.

The focus gets back on the content instead of the device. Certainly both are involved and mobile devices will have an influence, but the device is not the important aspect. The important thing for companies to realize heading forward is that you need to figure out the kind of content that earns the attention of your customers and gets them to take action.

The Mobile Customer and Content Preferences

If you look around the bus or the train or if you see people in their homes you likely see people reading and watching videos on their smartphones and tablets. There is no doubt that the under 50 crowd is consuming more content on their mobile devices. This is the trend CEOs are watching and analyzing as they make their plans for the future.

The next question people will have is how to create content that people will want to read or watch on their mobile devices.

Let’s look at a couple ways.

Always Start With Something Interesting

We are living in the age of information. People have access to more information today than at any point in the history of mankind. This access is accelerating and while that’s great for people it’s difficult for content creators. The competition is heating up because people are trying to earn the attention of others and attention doesn’t increase with the increase of information.

So how do you earn the attention?

The most important thing you have to get right is learning to be interesting. People are always drawn to things are are interesting. The content could be something helpful, entertaining, frightening or any of a number of other things. You need to be interesting in order to get attention with your content.

Make Someone’s Life Better

People are naturally looking to improve their lives. We aren’t always doing the right things, but for the most part we’re always at least trying to make our lives more enjoyable and better. It’s basic human nature.

If you can provide content that improves people’s lives and convince them that the content does what it intends you will win. It’s incredibly difficult to do this. You’ll have to focus on the lon-term benefits of the reader. You’ll have to focus on being personal and connecting by forming a relationship. It’s hard and that’s why many people shy away from content marketing, but this is where the opportunity is for marketers.

Create Actionable Tendencies

What’s important for your business with any content you create is to build in actionable tendencies in the people reading and watching. This is really an art and it’s difficult to get right. In fact, I’m not sure if you can ever find the perfect formula.

We want people to consume our content, but we also want them to realize that we’re selling things. It’s great to get attention, but that attention doesn’t mean anything if it doesn’t turn into sales.

I don’t have the perfect formula, but a few ways I try to work in actionable tendencies into all the blog posts I write include:

• Writing about topics that discuss the service provided
• Leaving readers with questions about more in-depth needs they have
• Building trust and a relationship with the readers

That’s what I try to do. Is there anything we can do to get those important actionable tendencies?