Besides, even if it was able to load in and emerge with a readable format, you need to remember that many people are paying heavily for each megabyte downloaded on their mobiles (not to mention for the time)… and they’re not going to wait twenty minutes for all your graphics and plug-ins to load.

One superb and very user-friendly plug in is WordPress Mobile edition. If you can’t find it by searching the plug-in section via your blog Dashboard, you can easily download it from WordPress.org’s plug-in section. (It even allows comments – something that is often a problem.)

One word of caution: If you have one of the smaller mobile phones, avoid the popular Carrington theme recommended on the WordPress.org WordPress Mobile editions page.)

According to WordPress.org, this plug-in works particularly well on Blackberries, iPhones, Androids, touch phones, all wireless, and PDA.

Advertising, Anyone?

If you want to display ads, the Mippin Mobilize plug-in (also found at WordPress.org) is a configuration-free plug in. It works by redirecting other mobile users to Mippin’s rendering of your blog. This is a nice plug-in, because it scales photographs to conform to your mobile site visitor’s screen width, and converts vides to 3G format.

Customization, Anyone?

If you’d rather customize your blog theme somewhat, a plug-in you might like is MobilePress. This one isn’t available at WordPress.org, but you can find it on its home site, mobilepress.co.za/.

It’s biggest benefit: Allowing you to use customized themes, and it also allows specific themes for the iPhone, as well as the Opera Mini browser and Windows CE Mobile. (Surprisingly simple to install!)

So there you have it: 3 fantastic plug-ins to help your WordPress blog go mobile.

(Perhaps the new mobile technology is going to end up being easier to adapt to than we think!)

People are doing more at home these days. For those restaurants that depend on sports and entertainment events to bring in traffic, they are finding that some people are not as interested to venture out to their local eatery, especially on weekday nights. That trend is not likely to reverse itself going forward, as people tighten their economic belts to save money.

But restaurant managers and owners that see this and take action can turn these trends into profits. Mobile marketing makes this possible, by filling more seats on those slow nights. Where people are probably not as easy to reach at home as they used to be with advertising, they are remarkably open and receptive to getting coupons and discounts on their mobile phone.

This means that if restaurant owners are willing to supply patrons with some of their best discounted deals via mobile marketing, they are likely to draw a good sized crowd into the location. Why? Because any visitor who would receive a message from a restaurant, has already been there. And if they actually agree to keep receiving the messages, they probably enjoyed themselves in the past.

To get a discount from a restaurant where they enjoyed themselves before is a good thing for satisfied customers. And in general, people tend not to ignore their mobile messages (statistics indicate that 97% of all messages sent are opened). When subscribers get those messages, the sender or restaurant owner/manager has a very good chance of seeing some of those people come back into the location even on traditionally slow nights, because:

1. They received a great deal saving money on something they like
2. They received notice of the deal on their mobile phone, which means they will take notice.

If you are interested in increasing the foot traffic to your location on your slow night, contact [your name] at [your number]. He will be happy to give you details on how to use mobile marketing on your “slow” nights.

Imagine your potential customers whipping out their cell phones to look for your type of product or service while “on the go”…

Yes! They found YOUR business’s website, but once they get to your website, they can’t find your phone number… or your directions… or your menu/services…

Of course, that information is probably on your website, but if it is not “mobile-friendly,” it will not be clearly visible to mobile users.

Because of this, visitors will quickly leave your website. Why would they stay? They can’t navigate your site to find what they need, so they move on to their competitors.

Studies show that more than 20% of local business searches are performed from mobile devices. That’s potentially 20% of business that YOU could be missing out on!

No matter what business niche you are in, times are tough these days when it comes to getting ore customers and sales. So you cannot afford to miss out on ANY business.

One simple way to prevent this is by having a mobile-friendly website for your business.

Traditional websites are built to be viewed on a computer screen instead of a small mobile phone screen. So viewing a traditional website that has not been “mobilized” on a mobile phone is almost impossible.

Not to mention that they take forever to load! In fact, most “non-mobilized” websites don’t even load at all on mobile devices.

Mobile-friendly websites simply make it convenient for your customers and potential customers to connect with you. As a business owner, your main goal is to remove all obstacles when it comes to your business’s “visibility.”

With mobile-friendly websites, “on the go” visitors can easily find and contact your business with one-click calling, one-click email, and instant directions. Again, this removes those “extra steps” that may be otherwise needed to contact your business.

What is “branding” exactly? The practice of creating an instantly recognizable site, logo, color scheme or any other visual “cue” that helps viewers identify it instantly with your product or business.

If you’ve set things up properly, the advantages you can expect to reap from branding are:

Your customer knows who you are and what you’re about
What to expect in quality, service and price
Whether or not he is your favored target market (and if he is, he tends to stay loyal!)

You need a strategy, if you decide to focus on branding. You need ideas and methods to keep your sites and products in front of the public eye.

Coca-Cola’s distinctive red-and-white colors are as much a part of its branding as its actual logo. Even when small details change, the overall feel stays the same.

The Coca-Cola polar bears are instantly recognizable as part of that brand. Their graphic representation taps into 2 key elements of strong branding:

- Consistency
- Repetition

Even though you don’t want heavy graphics with a mobile website, small graphic elements that instantly remind people of your brand will work well. Allowing your branding to remain even through your mobile sites ensures:

1. Potential customers think of you, the moment they see those graphic elements on their mobiles

2. Potential customers know instantly what they’re going to get – they develop either a positive or negative emotion when they see your name or logo

3 Repetition of positive feelings brings trust – and a willingness to entertain your offers

4. Trust brings purchases – and develops repeat customers, who remain loyal for as long as you remain consistent

So don’t neglect your branding (if that’s relevant to your business strategy) when you decide to go mobile.

It can help boost your credibility more than you might ever realize, or think!

- Reliable
- Quick to load
- Easy to browse

This latter requirement, however, differs slightly, when it comes to mobiles. “Easy to browse” means the navigation buttons can’t be too piddly-sized; shouldn’t be out of sight, and the amount of interaction (i.e. clicking and entering data) you have to do should be the absolute minimum.

And if it’s a mobile version of a well-established PC website, as many components as possible should be the same (or a simplified version), making it familiar and friendly to use.

Here are my top 6 picks for enjoyable and easy to use browsers for most mobiles. When so many sites still haven’t caught on to
what’s happening out in the real world, these sites are refreshingly easy to access – and use.

1. Topping the list and easily bagging the gold, m.facebook.com. You can basically use it exactly the way you would on computer.

2. Next, the silver medal goes to m.amazon.com. Amazon has espoused the credo: “Keep It Very, Very Simple”. What this means in
actual fact is that (providing you already have an Amazon account set up) you can purchase goods directly, using your mobile.

3. The bronze medal goes to the competitor everyone loves to hate (secretly), google.com/xhtml – you can personalize it for your
mobile, as well as access weather, movie times, news, and local searches. (A GPS, though, it’s not!)

4. This one’s a personal favorite… Darren Rowse’s Problogger.net has gone mobile (using the WPTouch plug-in, so you don’t even have to lift a finger to view it properlly in your mobile screen.)

5. Don’t want to wait till you get home to log onto Twitter? Don’t want to miss any of the latest links? You can set yourself up for
m.twitter.com either on your PC or on your mobile. (Only drawback – pushing it further down the list – no Direct Messages.)

6. Last but not least, mobile Wikipedia (wapedia.mobi/en) – entertaining and handy if you want to look something up in a spare
moment – but it’s last in my top six because Wikipedia data is not always reliable.

Notice that these are all large, mainstream sites. It’s my hope that more and more unique, individual sites will go mobile in the near future.

And then I hope you’ll write and suggest your own “local heroes”.