• Mobile data company Flurry reported nearly seven million Christmas Day phone activations worldwide on the two main mobile platforms, more than triple the usual daily activation average. Activations were evenly split between Android and iOS.
• Shipments of smartphones and tablets exceeded the total shipments of PCs for the first time ever in 2011.
• For websites we monitor,  the number of mobile visitors has grown from about 7% at the start of 2011 to around 20 – 30% at the end of the year.

It doesn’t need to be overwhelming however. Here are some things you can do:

• Create a Publishing Calendar – Schedule when you will post and stick to it. Not many people want to hear from you ten times a day, but once a month is probably not often enough. Post ahead if you have time. Programs like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite let you schedule status updates.
• Have a Conversation – What questions often come up from customers or potential customers? Writing a post about that provides useful content.  Listen and respond back to interaction you get, even just to acknowledge the responder.
• Make Your Website Your Online Home – Rather than trying to manage independently all the different media outlets, make your website your home and use the other outlets to bring customers and visitors back to your website.

Managing your online presence does not have to be difficult or costly, but it does require a plan and a time commitment!

Here are a few  guidelines:

• Link back to your website – Whether it is Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, or email marketing using a service like ConstantContact make sure you are also giving people a reason to keep coming back to your website.
• Set up a publishing schedule – Plan how often you will update and have some seasonal or general topics in reserve in case you get too busy. You can even use tools that let you schedule your posts ahead of time.
• Share your expertise – Do not make your posts one sales pitch after another or people will tune you out.  Share news, expertise, information you find valuable, links, photos, and special promotions.
• Build relationships – Make it a conversation! Respond to all who comment. Think about what makes your word-of-mouth marketing and face-to-face interactions positive and transfer that attitude to social media platforms.

It can take a while to build a successful online presence, but start where you can and stick to a schedule you can manage. It doesn’t cost a lot of money, and the return for the time spent building relationships can be significant.

I always tell clients that you must make it easier for people to do something than not do something. Spending time on getting interaction right is worth it. For years, a large part of our business was developing training programs for custom software applications used internally by businesses. Many corporate IT departments did not have usability or interface design expertise on internal development projects. It could take hours of training to teach people how to accomplish a task that would have been unnecessary if the interaction was more intuitive in the first place. Companies can require their employees to use something regardless of how difficult it is, but visitors to your public website have lots of options. Make sure that it is really easy for people to respond to your call to action!

Since an astounding 85% of all email that is sent today is spam (see Cisco IronPort Threat Operations Center), filtering for spam email has also become much more sophisticated. It is important to comply with the CAN-SPAM guidelines or your mail will not be delivered to your customers, and you may even be blacklisted by major mail services. Constant Contact helps you keep in compliance and takes care of the sending for you. They also have event registration and customer surveys as well.

With the rise of social media, they have put together another great resource for business owners. It goes over the basics of using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, and more to help develop your customer relationships. Find the site at www.socialquickstarter.com.

As a business owner short on time, I can appreciate how they have broken the guides into manageable segments and even let you pick the level of detail you’d like on each by letting you know how much it will take to review each topic.

Who is your audience?

Before any design begins, you will want to know who you are designing this for. Are you targeting existing customers, new prospects, businesses, consumers, young people, senior citizens or some combination? Know your demographics.  Are the members of your audience mobile internet users? Will they find your website using social media? Look at your existing customers, ask them questions, and try to identify additional customer groups you may not be addressing.  Knowing your audience makes the design process easier.

There may be multiple audiences which will require multiple goals.  The design of your website should reflect this by using clearly differentiated sections of the website, focused landing pages, and content that addresses the specific goals for each group.

What do you want out of the website? There is no right answer to this that fits all businesses – only your business. Some common goals include:

• Provide contact information (not many people use a yellow pages book any longer to find products and services)
• Provide potential customers information
• Provide information and support to current customers
• Generate and prequalify leads
• Get sign ups for your email newsletter
• Make and complete the sale

We take a just-in-time approach to training often using simulations to put people in situations they will experience on the job. We then ask them to complete the task at hand. If they are already familiar with the material they will be successful. If they are not, they are given the instruction to successfully complete the task.

Another component we use in our training is games.  Often training is required in addition to normal job requirements so we understand the challenges in getting people to complete the material. By creating an engaging interface we aim to make the training enjoyable as well as informative.

Google has acquired Zagat Survey LLC, the review and ratings service known for its burgundy-colored restaurant guides. Google will get features aimed at local businesses and advertisers.  With the wide adoption of smartphones with location-enabled services for internet searching, local search becomes increasingly important.  This is a good time for local businesses to revisit online search strategy and take advantage of local opportunities.

Read the Bloomberg article here.

It also has a good explanation of what items appear in a fan’s news feed when they are on Facebook.  “Top News” is the default view that everyone sees and Facebook’s EdgeRank formula determines which items appear here based on how much interaction an item gets (likes, comments), how much time is spent interacting between users – someone who posts frequently on your wall will see more of your items, and how recent a post was made.

Read the Co. Design article here.