For small businesses, things have finally matured (to some extent) in the location and mobile-based worlds.

Now that Facebook is on board with check-ins, there’s a built-in user base (even if most of them don’t know it) large enough to have a real effect.

For what I do for my clients, it finally gives me the ability to put in some more concrete strategies.

Instead of a “x and y might lead to z if it catches on right”, I can finally lay out “x+y=z”.

Mobile is a huge, huge part of this – when people get a new phone, by and large they’re getting a smartphone. The mobile market also includes the many new tablets you’re about to see emerge – the iPad was only the start.

As a small business, you can finally start taking more concrete advantage of things like Facebook and Twitter.

Get in touch and I’ll show you how Groupon is getting social – they’ve expanded their services and put in a platform especially for the business owner that can’t really handle 4000 new customers at 50% off.

You can now set your own deals (and volume limits on them) on an ongoing basis. Combining this with an optimized social presence and the correct integration to your actual locations will let you really take control of your online marketing efforts in a defined and measurable way.

If we’ve met and/or spoken about all this stuff, I’ve probably complained about your website to you.

The big reason for that is mobile phones.

Specifically, the now-common superphones like the iPhone, Android devices, and the higher-end Blackberries. (Well add the Windows 7 phone as well, although they just came out this week.)

Point being, these things are now “what you get” when you get a new phone, i.e. everyone will have one soon.

I can tell you from experience, I use it to surf the web and send emails – even to write blog posts – far more than I actually use it as a phone.

One need only look at these stats about the skyrocketing use of the mobile web to tell you I’m not alone.

Coming back to your website, two essential things to think about:

1) Is your site easy to read on a small screen? (A “nice looking” website in 2011 is a “cleanly designed” website. Check Time and Newsweek – these are major publications, and they’re mostly white space.)

2) Does your site load quickly? While smartphones are getting more powerful by the day, they still don’t compare to a higher speed laptop. (A clean design will aid in this.)

Take a look at your site and ask yourself if your potential customers are going to be able to get your site up on their phone.

This is an issue right now for many of the small businesses that come to see me about their web presence. It’s only going to get worse if they don’t fix it.

(I didn’t even mention the iPad and other pending tablets, nor the marketing advantages of being entrenched with a good mobile strategy.)

It’s been dark around here, but I’ve been pretty busy.

I did throw a post up over on SPR about indie book distribution and social media usage.

(This, in support of my new book, The Christmas Bridge: A Timeless Excitement Fable.)

While methods are a little different between marketing a novel via social and more traditional businesses, a lot of the baseline questions and concepts are the same.

One many people forget – you need to provide value to anyone following your social presence.

A repeated ad for your business or service is not value.

Companies have the ability to essentially become producers of content, and that’s what needs to be done to successfully navigate your business into social media waters and ultimately drive traffic/revenue.

Anyway, go give the article a read – there’s some applicable info through a slightly different lens.

Oh, and go buy my books, too. All digital versions are only $2.99 – you can find them all in the left sidebar of my personal website.

Most potential clients want to know one thing – what’s this going to do for me and how is it bringing me more business?

That’s really two things, but the first is really asking the second, so I’m calling it one.

If you read my last post, I explained six things social media tools can definitely do for you.

On the surface even those can play as somewhat vague, and I know this. Let me try and give you an example.

Just this week a current client had a very cool thing happen which I had nothing to do with – it’s related to #5 – word-of-mouth.

I’m not going to name names until I get permission, but let’s pretend for the sake of the discussion my client is a chiropractor.

Here’s what happened.

1) A man (who found my client’s practice on Twitter) became a patient.

2) The doctor laid out a two-year treatment program.

3) The patient decided to start an entire website and video series to track his progress. He’s also Tweeting about my client and what a great doctor he is.

That’s two years of free advertising and endorsement from a patient who’s genuinely touting his skills and abilities.

How did this happen?

Their patient just did it, all on their own. You really can’t plan for that, but now that it’s there, we can certainly work between the three of us to maximize on its existence.

Rolling it back to the real impetus to all of this is that my client was in the space and doing it right. We reached out, we engaged, the patient came into the office, and things went from there.

That they’re so creative was a stroke of luck, but if the doctor wasn’t on Twitter, they never would’ve come into the office at all.

The part that I like is nobody has to know I did a thing. My client comes out looking great, the patient feels great, and I just sit over here and nod my head and say, “yep”.

If you’ve sat down with me in person or talked on the phone, you’ve probably heard the six reasons I usually give for a business to get into the social media space:

1) Presence – Simply being in the space can be of value from a search standpoint.

2) Social SEO – I’ve written about this here extensively.

3) Brand Awareness – Monitoring the social graph for people talking about your company or industry.

4) Lead Generation – Finding people actively searching for the product or service you offer.

5) Word-Of-Mouth – Encouraging your current customers to spread the word or leave reviews.

6) Direct Marketing – Linking or posting special offers and incentives.

There are two ways I tackle these with clients – what you might call the ACTIVE and PASSIVE approaches.

The Active hits all of the above, the Passive hits some – usually 1-4, with a touch of 6.

Obviously #5 is the one that’s left out, the reason being that one really needs to go “all in” with social to make it effective. That generally means bringing it in-house to make it truly Active.

It needs to become a full part of the marketing and customer service protocols. In my experience, a lot of businesses just aren’t ready for that kind of commitment.

That’s exactly what it is, also – a commitment. Once things are up and running it’s a more smoothly operating machine, but there’s a period wherein someone has to say WE’RE DOING THIS, making it a true priority to learn the hows and whys of social networking.

An outside contractor or consultant can (and often should) guide the business through that process, but to get all pseudo-deep on you, the desire to do it has to come from within.

The Passive approach still has massive benefits, one of which is greasing the wheels to go Active when the time is right. My best Passive program is the Social Page One.

Anyone can start a Twitter account, Facebook page, etc.

Not everyone can use them right.

This is the same variation on the post I’ve been writing for the past month or two, but it’s all I have to add that’s not said better elsewhere.

(For the best in social media news and updates, go to Mashable. Lots of people in this biz like to have base their sites around rehashing their content – I see no point.)

In fact, via Mashable is this article about Old Spice v Cisco.

Short version is that Old Spice ran an extremely successful social media campaign recently. Cisco basically did the same program the next week, using the same tools. One blew up, the other one was ignored.

There are lots of things to read into this and analyze, but the one I want to emphasize is that the tools don’t matter. Creativity and the human element do.

One of the most successful social media campaigns out there for driving hard numbers and business is run by a couple guys with a taco truck in Los Angeles. At the same time, Wendy’s can’t seem to make it work.

It’s the talent and commitment to really doing it right, not the tools.

I don’t want to be simplistic, but there’s a certain simplicity to what social media can do for a business.

For example, I posted this fake-artsy picture of a Balance Bar wrapper on my Twitter this morning.

I did it because I like the product and it was just a fun way to throw away 30 seconds of my life.

What did Balance themselves have to do with this? Nothing – I couldn’t even find a presence for them on Twitter.

That fine, although they have no idea I just broadcast a free advertisement to 7500 people, and perhaps their extended network should they like the pic and pass it on.

Imagine if they decided to harness that power? What if they entered me in a contest for doing that? Ten free cases or something – I’d post every time I ate one.

What if they simply added a message on their wrapper telling people to Tweet pics of it?

People do this stuff – the tech allows everyone to throw away those 30 seconds, and people do it willfully for brands they love.

This is by no means limited to big brands, either.

Let’s say you’re an independent pizza place – by that, I mean you’re not Pizza Hut or one of the other big franchises.

Put a message on your box for people to Tweet a pic of their empty when they’re done – what’s the worst that could happen?

A bunch of people tell all their friends they just ate your product.

If you do that baseline thing – without even adding any creative element to it or even participating yourself (i.e. like Balance Bars) – that’s actually the worst thing that could happen.

Last time I checked that’s a good thing, and it cost you nothing other than adding an extra sentence to your pizza box design.

I keep saying it, but this stuff is not hard – you just need to put it in place.

I feel like I’m gaining some small moral victories lately in the war against scammy “social media gurus”.

This is as much the semi-maturing of the space as anything I’ve done, but it’s also because (he said humbly) I’m good, I know what I’m talking about, and I don’t run people around in circles with buzzwords and hyperbole.

I’ve had numerous calls and meetings the past couple weeks with people who have had a round of service from some of these people who make empty promises of “x number of followers on Twitter in y number of weeks” and such things.

Of course, at some point, those “x number of followers” better transfer into “y number of leads” or “z number of sales”, and people are starting to make that revelation as they’re able educate themselves more on social media usage for business.

One thing I always tell potential clients is “anyone can do social networking”.

It’s true, also – there are thousands of people who can set up a Twitter account, build you a Facebook page, and make it look like your business is “doing social networking”.

In my work, I use a different phrase, and that’s “using social networking”. Subtle difference, but important.

Ask your potential social networking consultant/strategist/whatever some pointed questions to see where they fall. Next time they promise you “x number of followers on Twitter”, follow up by asking:

How valuable are those followers?
What do you plan to do with those followers?
Are those followers just a bunch of useless bot accounts?

If their answers run you around in circles, run.

Also – and this is just my opinion – if their company blog has generic business pictures, that’s another reason to run.

Personally, I like to make fake pretentious art pictures like the cool blurry portrait I just took of a water jug and my iPod headphones in widescreen format.

I was talking about the convergence of TV and the net late last year.

Really, it’s been around in some form for awhile, but with Google moving into the space officially this fall, I think the time is upon us. Give this a watch:

As far as your business is concerned – let’s say you have an in-ground pool installation company.

Person A is watching a show on TLC about pool installations, and while they’re watching, they decide to search for companies in their area who do it.

More than likely, they also hit up their social network to Tweet out that they’re watching this show and thinking of exploring the idea. How nice would it be if your company was right there to show them what you can do?

This scenario can and does happen all the time right now, but remove the “pick up the laptop” step, and it’s going to happen all the more often.

I don’t advertise that I do this type of work – if you looked at my personal social presences, you’d really have to drill down to make your way here.

The reason is simple – everyone and their brother/sister is a “social media consultant” these days, and I don’t think being another “guy who Twitters about Twitter” is of particular value.

It’s a lot of hot air to me and the space is a hotbed of talkers and scammers.

I’d reference the person I talked about in this post as part of that problem, as well as someone who recently started following me on Twitter.

They’ll remain unidentified here, but this was in their profile description.

I create businesses, products, and client solutions for you via social media strategies.

Here’s my reaction to that statement – what in the world are you talking about?

Could you be more generic and vague? (While trying to seem impressive and powerful?)

I don’t want to sit here and complain, but a lot of my time recently has been spent defending my approach to potential clients who want me to promise them the world.

Often I find myself saying things like, “Well, starting a Twitter account and selling 100,000 units by next week isn’t going to happen, but let’s look at some options for what might be possible.”

When “Social Media Consultant X” offers up the mythical “100,000 Unit Promise” and a bunch of social media mumbo-jumbo about having presences on 15 networks and blah, blah, blah…it sounds impressive.

My point is that what’s so exciting about social tools – that there are very few 100% proven strategical paths to success – is also a hitch in the culture of it.

When nobody knows anything, it’s easy to say anything and make it sound good.