Another from my working life...

By Michelle Eichner and Len Shneyder

Social networks have evolved to fill every societal niche. There are sites dedicated to business networking like LinkedIn, special interests such as Vampirefreaks.com and monolithic sites like MySpace that have become hubs of innovation with features such as artist pages that provide struggling musicians a fast and easy means to promote their talents.

Why so much buzz about social networks? In a recent Reuters article, MySpace was quoted as having 110 million users and Facebook boasted 67 million active users.

It’s not just about size, though – social networks have mastered the art of engagement as evidenced by enviable stats such as 20-plus visits per month, 500-plus viewed pages per visitor and 200-plus minutes per visitor per month.

Mobile? You’d think these fat cats would be resting on their laurels, but they’re not ...

While most businesses have yet to embrace an increasingly mobile audience, social networking sites are setting the trend.

With the exception of Friendster, the majority of industry leading social networking sites, including Bebo, MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn (in beta), Twitter and even a Russian site called Vkontake, have firmly planted themselves as mobile-ready by creating light, sleek and relevant versions of their sites for mobile devices.

One of the challenges in mobilizing your site is adapting your content to an extremely limited environment – both in size and in functionality.

This requires trade-offs between what you want to promote to consumers and what will compel them to use your site from their smartphone.

In the case of most social networking sites, the mobile landing page tends to be the friend update section, which makes a lot of sense when you consider that people are using social networking sites as a means of keeping track of what their friends are doing.

Instead of bombarding mobile users with promotions, social networks’ mobile sites have honed-in on the core services and functions that their customers are most likely to need or want when on-the-go.

The cue we can take from the social networking world is that regardless of how popular you already are or aren’t, providing easy access via any means a user might possibly want is a critical key to retaining and growing your user base in the 21st century.

While the rest of us are repeating the mantra of targeting the right person, at the right place, at the right time, social networking sites recognize that to do so successfully today means cross-platform capabilities.

It’s not only about reaching consumers when they are sitting in front of their computer but also when they are standing at a subway stop, walking down the street or sitting on top of a mountain with their smartphone in hand.

Don’t dig social networking sites or need another reason to create a mobile-ready site? Take a look around you the next time you’re waiting for your flight: How many people have a smartphone in hand?

Smartphones are not just the mainstay of busy travelers; they are a hot-ticket item amongst consumers of all generations. The future is here: mobilize with it.

Michelle Eichner is co-founder and vice president of client services for Pivotal Veracity, a Scottsdale, AZ-based deliverability consultancy and service provider.

Len Shneyder is director of partner relations and industry communications at Pivotal Veracity.