Reach out to the mobile reader

Say hello to your audience.

Next time you're in a public place look around. What do you see? I'll bet more than a majority of the people will have two white wires running to their ears or their gazes will be cast down at a phone.

If it's your job to reach an audience, you need to think mobile.

If you want to reach me, for example, I am reading on my phone more and more. It sure beats lugging a laptop around just to catch up on my reading.

The rise of smartphones means that more and more people are going online from a mobile device, Karen McGrane writes at The Harvard Business Review.

According to Pew Internet, 55 percent of Americans said they'd used a mobile device to access the internet in 2012. A surprisingly large number — 31 percent — of these mobile internet users say that's the primary way they access the web. This is a large and growing audience whose needs aren't being met by traditional desktop experiences.

Some more numbers:

Young adults: 50 percent of teen smartphone owners, aged 12-17, say they use the internet mostly on their cell phone, according to a 2013 Pew Internet report . Similarly, 45 percent of young adults aged 18-29 mostly go online with a mobile device.

Amazon, Wikipedia, and Facebook all see about 20 percent of their traffic from mobile-only users, according to comScore. A whopping 46 percent of shoppers reported they exclusively use their mobile device to conduct pre-purchase research for local products and services. Internal data from some finance, healthcare, and travel providers show similar mobile-only usage. If you're trying to reach customers who only shop, bank, and socialize on their mobile devices, you're missing out.

Do us all a favor and make your messages mobile friendly. If you're in love with an annoying popup add on your site, you're not mobile friendly.