2012 has been a big year for social media, lots of changes have come into effect. Most notably the floatation of Facebook & we’ve seen a number of new platforms gain notoriety such as Pinterest. But as this year closes out, we’re looking into our cristal ball to make our prediction on what 2013 will hold & how small businesses can stay ahead of the curve.

For a number of years, the internet has been getting smaller. Not in volume, but in how it is viewed. Mobile is becoming a key way of getting online & will continue to grow as the main way people access the internet as phones become more convenient, faster with access to services such as 4G & easier to use.

Social networks such as Twitter, Instagram & Path are optimised for smartphones, so a strategy that works now doesn’t need to be amended, but you may need to look at tweaking your approach to blogging, Email campaigns & Facebook to cope with your community viewing your content on 3.5 inch screens.

The big change you need to make is to make everything smaller. A smaller screen can only contain so much information & reading for sustained amounts of time becomes a strain, so a reader is likely to give up reading long paragraphs of text unless it’s super interesting.

For your blog posts, make them around 200 words if possible (This one is over 200, but it’s not 2013 yet! ), this is long enough to make a great point but not too long.

In your email campaigns, keep it simple. Have one call to action, one product focus & try to target it to your audience. If they have bought children’s clothes from you in the past, make sure the product you email them is for kids. If they bought a TV from you, make sure the CTA is based around the same theme, like a home cinema system.

2013 is going to be a big year, only smaller. How are you going to change?