I heard this on NPR this morning:  Our ability to distribute content has surpassed our ability to create interesting content…

For me, social media is just what we do. It’s no longer this bright and shiny thing.  The newness has faded – naturally – into the more important question:  What can it do for me?

The answer?  A lot.

I guess what I am trying to say is there was a time when the telephone was a novelty.  People would have found delight just staring at it.  But we no longer have that awe.  We just want it to work.

Social media is the same.  It’s time to get over it and just start using it as a tool, kind of like how we use a toothbrush.  Without much thought or deliberation.

The other day I was giving a presentation on e-commerce best practices to Chamber of Commerce members.  I was explaining how customers are TWICE as likely to purchase when they see social media recommendations (source: Social Commerce Recommendations).

One of the attendees asked, “How do I get more followers?”

Well, it’s easy. You just have to be sexy, famous, and/or provocative.  I explained how my brother – out of fear of too much online data mining – created a fictional Facebook profile called Heidi Longfellow.

He doesn’t do anything to grow his following but he still sees a steady stream of people friending him.  (As a practical joke, let’s all friend him right now.  Don’t tell him I told you to do it).

My wife, who is very attractive, created a Twitter account a few years ago and instantly saw her base climb to 1,000 followers.  She didn’t put any effort into soliciting interest.  That’s just the way it is.

So what about the rest of us?  How can we be more engaging online?

In the words of Patricia Travaline, you can start by keeping your content “searchable, snackable and sharable.”  The three S’s.

• On average, individuals receive more than 3,000 brand impressions per day. (Source: SmartBlogs.com)

• Consumers will consult 10 online sources before making a purchase.  Most people (65%) are primarily visual learners.  And the average attention span of an adult online is 8 seconds. (Source: Skyward).

• Offering deals and discounts helps capture fans, but it usually isn’t sufficient.

• A recent study by a mobile video advertising firm, Rythm Media, shows users follow brands on Twitter and Facebook because they want to show their loyalty. (Isn’t that the same reason why people tattoo ‘Harley Davidson’ on their bodies??)

• Not surprisingly, mobile is playing an increasingly important role in social engagement.  Nearly 75% of Facebook access Facebook on their mobile devices several times each day.  Fifty-six percent of Twitter users engage brands, with more than 60% of them using Twitter on mobile every day.

• Make sure your posts include targeted keyword phrases.  For example,  one frustrating aspect of Craiglist is how to include video in your listing.  So, if you search on something like “how to embed a video to craigslist”, you will see supergeeks.net  is number 3 on Google – without even trying.

• Keep it real. My eyes get glossy when I see fluff pieces. Be edgy, opiniomate, insightful, upbeat, relevant and useful.  We are all experts in something.  Let that thing permeate through.

• Add social media buttons to everything.  Studies show you can boost engagement by more than 30% if you include social media buttons in ads.

So here’s your homework: Create a quick guerrilla marketing campaign focusing on your customers.  Maybe it’s an impromptu pic and a little story about the thorn you removed from the proverbial paw.  Ask followers to share their pics and their mini stories. Interact with them. And make sure all of your content is mobile ready and easily sharable.

Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see immediate results.  If you are like the rest of us, it will take time to grow your following.  The good news is it will all be yours.

There’s a tiny cash register in your pocket.  It’s called a smart phone.  And it’s changing the way we shop.

If your business sells anything online, you must gear up for mobile commerce, or what we call ‘mcommerce.’

Mobile commerce is big and getting bigger.  Just take a look at the numbers:

• 29% of mobile users have already used a phone to make a purchase (source: BI Intelligence).

• 12% of ecommerce in 4Q 2012 was made via smart phone or tablet (source: comScore)

• There will be 500M mobile shoppers worldwide by 2016 (source: yStatus)

• Expect triple digit growth rates in mcommerce thru 2016. (source: yStatus)

• In 2013 Asia-Pacific ecommerce sales will overtake North America ecommerce sales with over a third of globel ecommerce sales from Asia-Pacific (source: yStatus)

• Men in U.S. are 20% more likely than women to use mobile to make a purchase (source: Kantar Media).

• 43% of tablet computer users spend more time on their tablets than their computers (source: Google)

• 33% of tablet computer users spend more time on their tablets than watching TV (source: Google)

• Tablet users are early adopters who typically spend more money, book more trips, and consume more media content (source: Adobe)

The bottom line is your ecommerce site MUST support mcommerce.

So what can you do?  Well, your ‘old’ website probably doesn’t fit well on smaller screens.  Sure, you can ‘see’ the site on your smart phone or tablet, but you can’t shop easily.  For example, the text may be too small to read.  And the navigational features, like hover buttons and drop down menus, won’t be intuitive for mobile users who move through sites by tapping and sliding.

Moreover, your ‘old’ site is most likely too heavy for mobile.  It may load too slowly on mobile.  Mobile shoppers prefer speedy pages and beautiful, tactile images and graphics.

One quick workaround is to create subdomains for your website, something like ‘m.yourdomain.com.’  Basically, you would make different templates for different screen sizes.  When a shopper visits your site on a smart phone, your site will automatically serve the template for smart phones.  Similarly, your site will show the template for tablets when someone accesses the site via a tablet.

The problem with this method is maintenance.  Every time you make a change to the ‘desktop’ site, you must then make the same change to all the other templates.  It becomes too labor intensive.

The smart way is to replace your ‘old’ site with a responsive design.  Responsive websites automatically adjust to the users screen size.  In this case, you have one site that rearranges itself for an optimal shopping experience.

To see a live example of responsive design, go to UnitedPixelWorkers.com.  If you are on a desktop or laptop, take your cursor and make the window smaller.  Notice how the site automatically rearranges itself?  That’s responsive design.

I recommend Magento (magentocommerce.com) for most ecommerce sites.  You can buy responsive themes here:  templatemonster.com/magento-themes.php.  When shopping for themes, just concentrate on the ‘flow’ or layout of the design.  All other design elements, like colors, pictures, graphics and text, can be easily customized.

As you may know, I have a martial arts school for children call Smart Karate (smartkarate.com). I love to tell the kids that every day is their birthday, every day is Christmas, and every day is Thanksgiving.

The reactions are predictably silly and wild-eyed with impish protest and disbelief.  But when I go on to explain how we SHOULD view every new day as something special, they gradually begin to see how they can change their own perspectiveand ultimately feel more empowered.

We business owners play this ‘black belt trick’ fairly often.  And we usually do it quietly in our heads.  It keeps us hopeful and forever pushing forward – filling the unforgiving minute with 60 seconds worth of distance run,  as Kipling would say.

The good thing about national holidays is they give us nice little reminders about what’s truly important and to start planning for a better future.  We need these markers, especially when we get too busy taking care of business.

So in the spirit of the coming new year, the ability to chart our own futures, and the joy of using emerging technologies to help us do more by doing less, I will share with you a quick checklist of tech resolutions for your business.  What we ultimately want is pretty simple:  happy customers, happy employees and a happy CPA.  And if we can change the world for the better, then we are doing very, very well.

Here’s how you can leverage technology next year to capture new clients, keep them, and have plenty of money in the bank:

• Nuke your website.

Chances are you have one.  But you most likely haven’t re-imagined what it can be doing for you.  You must assess your business and determine how you can do what you do in a web-enabled way. Having a brochure-like site online is not enough anymore.  To stay competitive, it’s imperative you move your business’ lifecycle online.  This includes sales functions, post-sales customer service, human resources, employee training, intra-office communications, etc.  Downsize your brick-and-mortar footprint.  Supersize your online real estate.

 Use WordPress for non-commerce sites:   Themeforest.net

Use Magento for e-commerce sites: TemplateMonster.com

• Go mobile.

There are more Americans who have mobile phones than Americans who have  passports.  Kids these days learn how to use a mobile phone before knowing how to tie their shoes.  Next year more people will access the internet via their mobile phones than from their PCs.  Mobile matters to your business.  Your customers expect their mobile experience to be as good as their desktop experience.  In fact, 52% of users will not engage a company when the mobile experience if bad  Fifty percent of mobile searches lead to a purchase.

 Want to see what your site looks like on a mobile device?  Check out HowToGoMobile.com

• Throw out the server.

There was a time when we all needed an in-house server and it would cost $15K every few years to replace it.  The internet is now the server.  And companies like Google, Amazon and Microsoft are wholly committed to taking care of your cloud-based operations.  For example. we now monitor clients’ networks remotely.  We can spot issues and resolve them before they become issues.  And we can fix your desktop hiccups over the internet.  It’s cheaper, faster and better for everyone.

 Moving to solutions like Google Apps for Business can save your company hundreds of dollars per year per employee.  Cloud computing can also speed communication between team members and clients, and give your company the ability to conduct business anytime/anywhere.  It’s awesome!

• Play with social.

One of the fastest growing social sites is Pinterest.  My wife created a board a few months ago called ‘Cute Baby Clothes for Boys’.  It’s a part time hobby for her but the amazing thing is she already has 600+ followers and receives 2-3 baby outfits per month from various manufacturers.  They send her those outfits free, just to say “Thanks!” for sending them so much business through her Pinterest board.  I am not saying you should be like her.  Instead, I am saying you should be like those manufacturers.  If Pinterest is global and predominantly female, and if Pinterest is one of the strongest social tools for brand referrals, how can your company join the fun?  Social enables you, the owner, to connect with your customers unlike ever before.

 Read this article on why fortune 500 CEOs should learn to love social: http://goo.gl/IzHEX

• Try PPC.

This is a good one for the holidays.  PPC is geek-speak for ‘Pay-Per-Click’ advertising.  Instead dumping money into something like Yellow Pages, where you were locked into a 12 month contract and really couldn’t discern how many people were viewing your ad, PPC advertising via Google, Facebook and LinkedIn, for example, let’s you send a highly focused ad to a very specific demographic.  You control everything, including where in the world the ad is displayed and who gets to see it.  You also have full control over your how much you want to spend per click, per day, per month, etc.  You can turn it on today and turn it off tomorrow and get qualified leads all day long.  Caution:  Be sure to minimize your budget while you’re experimenting.  You don’t to blow through $2K overnight.  Also, be sure you link the ad to very focused landing page.  So, if you’re selling Kona coffee, the ad should focus only on coffee lovers who have expressed an interest in quality coffee, and when they click on your ad, they should get a landing page that’s all about Kono coffee and full of call-to-actions (CTAs).

• Drill into your data.

In the tech industry, we love to use words like ‘big data’, because it sounds cool and really is the new thing.  There’s a ton of money to be earned by helping companies know more their customers, the efficiencies of their business operations, and the changing competitive landscape.

 We don’t have the budgets to hire the real ‘big data’ ninjas.  But thanks to all things digital and the do-it-yourself internet world, we can now study our company’s numbers ourselves.  For example, using software to manage your customers is a huge advantage compared to the old school way of doing things.  If your company does not yet have a solid tool for developing customer profiles, assigning tasks, shepherding opportunities and calendaring related events, then you may want to signup for a few trial accounts.

Search online for ‘CRM’.  We use Insightly and I’m quite pleased.  It interfaces well with our accounting solution (QuickBooksOnline.com) and with our productivity solution (Google Apps.)

The last thing I want to say is I have a 7 month old baby boy named Jett.  He’s the first kid I’ve manufactured and he’s the best thing I’ve ever done!

Lately, he’s been try to stand up.  It’s a clumsy and endearing effort but he’s not yet good at it.  Most importantly, he’s always ready and willing to try again – even after an unplanned tumble.

Our approach to emerging technologies should be the same.  We should be unwaveringly curious and always be at the ready to get back up.

If we can do that – every day of the year – then we will always be competitive.  Happy Holidays!

Computers were created to ease our lives, but it turned out that we no longer need to write with a pen. All we do is drum our keyboards.

In 90s sign-up or application forms were filled in by hand, now all forms are on screen and can be filled in automatically (if this function is turned on in your browser).

Sign-up forms are used almost on every website, which is why there exist hundreds of variations of this design element starting form minimalistic ones and up to terrific examples with impressive animation.

Today we would like to sum-up best practices and showcase examples that can’t be ignored. Additionally, we are glad to provide you several tips that will help you optimize your forms making them laconic and simple for understanding.  Read more.

SEO Tips for Your Business