Last week, USA Today ran a story about “mobile marketing” for small businesses. It encouraged small business owners to begin pursuing smartphone-based marketing solutions that will direct people to their storefronts and websites. The suggestions offered by USA Today also provide insight for mobile app developers.

USA Today reporter Rhonda Abrams encourages small businesses owners to “get found;” in other words, make sure potential customers can find you. Mobile app developers should be thinking about ways to help small businesses expedite the process of registering their businesses on sites like Yelp and Foursquare. Other, business-related, apps could also be marketed on those web pages.

Abrams also suggests that small business owners need to start getting to know their customers. Sites like Twitter and Facebook seem to have cornered the market on social networking, so the idea of creating a new social networking app may be daunting. However, these sites can provide developers with additional opportunities to market their business-related apps directly to those who are most likely to use them.

Small business owners are also encouraged to offer coupons and deals that are formatted for and accessible via smartphones. Apps that are easy to use and require little set-up or maintenance will be most appealing to small business owners, who are often pressed for time and won’t bother with apps that are complicated or require a lot of updating. Apps that allow customers to pay via smartphones are promoted, too.

At the start of a new year, it’s natural to look back on the year gone by and take note of significant trends or topics. Fortunately for mobile app developers, a couple of trends reached important turning points in 2011, and indicate a potential for considerable sales increases in 2012.

The first trend was the the shift from desktop and laptop computers to mobile devices. In 2011, for the first time ever, sales of mobile devices outpaced computers. Increases in mobile devices means increased demand for mobile apps, which brings us to our second trend -

People spent more time in mobile apps than Internet browsers. For example, instead of opening a Safari window to access Facebook, people used apps on their mobile devices. As the graph shows, as of June,people spent 74 minutes a day in Internet browsers, and 81 minutes per day in mobile apps. The number of minutes spent in apps nearly doubled from the previous year, from 43 to 81 minutes.

As these trends continue, people will be looking for mobile apps that entertain, organize, and keep them connected with their friends and family.