The new iPhone numbers put iPhones sold somewhere around 15 million. 15 Million iPhone users means 15 million people using their phone to get to your website. Add that to the low millions of units of Google’s Android, the Blackberry Storm, and the Palm PRE and you have millions of people that are regularly using their handheld device to access the internet. The problem with these devices, for you and I, is that their small screens don’t display our 900 pixel across websites well. Even with a nice, big 3 inch screen, your site is generally going to look terrible when compared with how it looks on a large machine like a laptop or desktop.

What’s the solution? How do we conquer the limitations these devices place on our designs?

Scripting coupled with handheld specific websites. If you are running WordPress, there is a fantastic plugin that will create a separate site for your WordPress install. If you don’t, we can create a handheld or iPhone specific site without a terrible expense. Taking the content you already have, we create a separate site that only users of the iPhone, Android, or Storm get redirected to. Scripting detects the device and then sends them to the appropriate site based on what device they are using.

The advantage? Better exposure for your site. If you can increase your site conversion by as little as 10% because iPhone users see your site easier, that could translate in to thousands of dollars of business in the long run.

Handheld devices are not the future, they are now, and ignoring this trend will cost you. It’s time to upgrade your site to be iPhone worthy…

As of this writing, Facebook claims more than 200 Million Users, more than 100 Million of which access the site on a daily basis. That’s a pretty good group of people that are using the site on a daily basis. To be sure, everyone that is in business wants a piece of that action. The problem that I have heard among the online marketers that I talk to is that Facebook is not a place for buyers. Let me go back…

There are four ways a business can use Facebook to generate business:

1. Buy Facebook Ads
2. Create and Maintain Facebook Fan Pages
3. Create and Maintain Fan Applications
4. Use Guerrilla Posting to Promote Products and Services

Again, what I hear around town is that Facebook is not a place for buyers, so buying Facebook ads is less effective. Facebook is a social network, people say. Users of Facebook don’t want to buy stuff, they just want to get on and chat with friends and share pictures and stuff.

Let me address this right now: Facebook may not be a place for buyers, but you can more effectively target your customers using Facebook ads than any other online ad marketplace I have seen. Google Adwords will let you target geographic areas and specific sites, but beyond that you are stuck to whoever sees and then clicks on your ad. Facebook ads are more specific. You want males 18-34? You got it. You want women with the word “kids” in their profile? You can target only those specific people. With Facebook ads, you can pare down your results to a wild level, unheard of even in the nichiest of marketplaces.

I have been buying ads for a book I wrote, Who Are You Really?, through Facebook, and had modest success. Honestly, buying ads to sell a book online is less effective, but I wanted to experiment with those type of ads and see how it worked before I recommended it to clients. I have had a dozen or so sales from the ads, but the good part is that ads convert well. If someone is clicking, more than half the time they are buying.

The second way to get business through Facebook is Fan pages. Fan pages can be a powerful way to communicate with your fans and to spread the word about things, as long as you have a relevant message to share. It’s akin to Twitter, where if people become a fan, they are going to get updates from your fan page and you can keep them informed. If you don’t have a relevant message to share with people on a regular basis, i.e. specials, events, new products, etc, then fan pages are less effective.

Applications can be a good way to keep in touch as long as they are fun and keep people interested. I have only seen a half dozen companies successfully pull this off. It seems like a fairly expensive way to get and keep customers…

Guerrilla posting is an art form. There are people that can do it and people that just suck. The key to being a guerrilla poster and having it be successful is two fold: get thousands of friends and be covert. I have about a thousand friends right now on Facebook, and I posted status update that invited people to help me test a new product, Contadino’s. Within minutes I had enough people for the test. Not covert, but not a solicitation for business either.

On the other side of the coin, I have one friend on Facebook (FOF) that only solicits business. I don’t want to see his ads in my updates page, I just don’t. He never has anything good to say or interesting, it’s all ads and sales. I blocked him after about a month of it…I just couldn’t take it.

One FOF that I admire is Kurt Bestor. He’s a composer and has thousands of FOFs, but the only time he is selling something is about once a month, and it usually comes in the form of a giveaway. He updates his status with fun, interesting things that are happening in his life and keeps us all informed about what he is up to professionally without selling us on anything.

Posting is an art. If you are overt in your attempt to sell people or trap them in to something in Facebook, it is really obvious and people avoid it. If you are bold and declare it as it is, without it being the only thing you ever Facebook about, then you will be better served using Facebook.

I’ll be talking more about this in the future, as well as hitting up Twitter, and iPhone/smart phone topics in the near future…