When Tami Riecke, the operations manager at the Albert Lea-Freeborn County Chamber of Commerce, wants to look up a phone number, she doesn’t go to a phone book. She goes online.

So does web programmer Jeshua Erickson. So does video producer Matt Levorson. So does Albert Lea city spokeswoman Teresa Kauffmann. So does just about everyone these days who works with a computer or a smartphone on a regular basis.

“If you’ve got a business and you’re not online, you’re missing the boat,” Levorson said.

There is a wide segment of the Albert Lea community on the web. From bill payers to news reading to shoppers to social networkers, they are there.

Levorson, owner of Matt Levorson Productions, mlpvideo.com, said his work takes him on the road often. To make a call, he Googles a business on his new Droid Incredible from Verizon Wireless and expects to see the search engine produce the address, phone number and website with a small map, too.

“I just click on the number, and my phone calls it,” he said.

He said it can be frustrating when the business doesn’t come up, often as a result of it not having an online presence.

“I was actually searching for a business the other day and couldn’t find it. I had to find the Facebook page,” he said.

Levorson, who also designs websites, said he encourages companies to have a website, not merely a Facebook page. For instance, he said a restaurant without its menu online is at a disadvantage to restaurants that have menus online.

Cathy Purdie, marketing director at Trail’s Travel Center, said she has had great response to having the Trail’s Family Restaurant menu online. She said hosts of bus tours will call when planning trips.

They can print the menu from www.trailstravelcenter.com and share it with passengers. The same works for family reunions and other groups.

She said truckers can log onto the Trail’s website to access the Dial A Truck board, which allows them to find return loads so they avoid one-way hauling.

And she said Trail’s intends to expand its online offerings, putting up inventory of the gift shop so people can purchase online.

“The web is just amazing,” Purdie said.

Levorson said he does a lot of purchasing online for his business and for his personal life.

“I can shop 20 stores at once and get the best prices,” he said. “And it’s always fun getting a package in the mail.”

Some might criticize shopping online as not shopping locally, but Levorson said that is thinking behind the times. Many online stores have a brick-and-mortar location somewhere and at one point decided to sell goods over the Internet. He said local stores can do the same and pointed to one local store as an example for others.

Reinertson Embroidery’s website — www.reinertsonsembroidery.com — allows people to order embroidered products from aprons to T-shirts. Want a windbreaker that has “Allis Chalmers Orange Power” stitched on the back? With a few clicks, it’s done, and people don’t have to drive to the store.

“She gets tons of orders online. I can shop locally online if the stores go there,” he said.

The Reinertson website even features a help section for people new to the World Wide Web.

A leading place for socializing online in Albert Lea is Facebook. Asked to name a place they socialize with other Albert Leans online — not counting the Albert Lea Tribune’s website — Levorson, Riecke, Erickson, Purdie, Kauffmann all said Facebook. So did real estate agent Kisti Skaar, real estate broker Bill Leland and Albert Lea Medical Center spokeswoman Jennifer Levisen.

“It’s amazing what you can learn about Albert Lea being on Facebook,” Levisen said. “You interact with people in a different way.”

Through Facebook, she sees people in photos with their family rather than merely in the work settings. She also becomes fans of businesses she frequents, such as the Albert Lea Hy-Vee grocery store.

In addition, Levisen, a marathon runner, is a fan of the Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth. She watches the Grandma’s Facebook page for updates and talks online about training with other runners.

Erickson said Facebook is the primary place Albert Leans go for socializing with friends and family. People hit AlbertLeaTribune.com regularly for news and comments, and they visit several other sites for resources. For instance, they will look up grades at the Albert Lea Area Schools website or download the Community Education catalog. They will get records or tax information from the Freeborn County website.

The other places people gravitate toward are sites for their own interests.

Some people go to albertlea.com, a discussion forum.

“I think it is sort of a community. For better or worse, I think they give each other a place to go,” Erickson said.

And there are new local social forums popping up, such as albertleaonline.com.

But he added, “If you have Facebook, why do you need anything else for social networking?”

Skaar has a story about Facebook. She said her sister, Sarah Schaub, was outraged that soap actor Drew Garrett was fired from “General Hospital” in March. She began a page on Facebook that demanded his return.

“She got so many people to join this page on Facebook that it got national attention” by the celebrity media, she said.

Garrett called Schaub to thank her for the support.

Erickson noted the other places Albert Leans visit online are clubs, churches and other organizations.

He said just having any website will reach the web community better than none at all. But creating one can seem like a tall order. He suggests keeping the navigation simple.

“Forget about being unique if people can’t get around your site,” he said. And as for content, “Ask yourself: Why would people go to my site?”

He suggests sites avoid being static — that is, always having the same content — so people return. For instance, he maintains the website for Christ Episcopal Church in Albert Lea. He posts a recording of the sermon each week and posts the church newsletter. Two items once a week doesn’t take much time and gives people a reason to come back. And as a result, the site becomes a handy archive of sermons and newsletters.

For people just learning to create websites, it

is important to not be afraid to make mistakes. He said the people who know web programming have learned it through trial and error.

Of course, some of the things some sites forget to have are the most important: names, addresses and telephone numbers.

Riecke said that is one of the benefits of the chamber’s website: an online listing of contact information for Albert Lea businesses. She goes there frequently because it’s her job to maintain the site.

She hasn’t been to the social forum albertlea.com in years, she said, but because she is a mother who lives in Hartland she does visit the New Richland-Hartland-Ellendale-Geneva School District website often and sometimes stops at the Albert Lea city site or the Freeborn County site.

“I was just at the county site to look at the hazardous material recycling schedule, and I looked up my property tax bill,” Riecke said.

For local news, she goes to AlbertLeaTribune.com, and for national news she visits the websites for Fox News and for CNN.

Kauffmann, owner of web creation company Tess Design, loves to take photos. As public information coordinator for the city, she must take photos, yet she also pursues photography as a hobby, too. Like many photographers, she posts pictures on Flickr, a site dedicated to sharing photos. Flickr allows users to combine their images into sets, select favorites, control licensing, order prints and many other features. The most popular feature is sharing photos in groups with other users.

Kauffmann is a member of these groups, among others: Albert Lea, Your Best Shot 2009, Rochester Strobist, Everything Minnesota!, “La Crosse Wisconsin,” Rochesterians, Southern Minnesota, Southern Minnesota Magazine, Greater Minnesota and Participants of Scott Kelby’s Worldwide Photo Walk.

Like others, she pays bills online and banks online. One of her main web talents is being able to find anything on the Internet — from phone numbers to trivia — using Google. She knows all the tricks, such as using quotes to search for phrases or using advanced search to search within a single website. She knows the little-known asterisk trick. If you use an asterisk — Favre passed for * yards — it tells Google to fill in the blank.

“I am the queen of Google. I can Google anything,” Kauffmann said.

Kauffmann maintains the city website. The search at cityofalbertlea.org, of course, uses Google.

Erickson said when he moved to Albert Lea he first looked at the Tribune’s website before looking at sites for the city, churches, schools, hospital, parks, restaurants and any activities he could find. He also visited the Wikipedia site for Albert Lea.

He combed the web for images, be they still photography or videos.

“I instantly wanted to see pictures of downtown, for example,” he said. “Downtown is what I think a town looks like.”

Naturally, he come across real estate websites, and Riecke said she sometimes likes to peruse real estate websites just for the fun of looking at the houses.

Many real estate agents simply have a page on their agency’s site, but Skaar has her own site. It is KistiHomes.com. By having her own site, she has greater control over the content, which she said better serves her clients. For instance, her site’s users can opt for English or Spanish.

She advertises at AlbertLeaTribune.com. Being at the newspaper’s site, she said, on one hand gets her name in front of the community and on the other hand catches the eye of people moving to town.

She uses Google Analytics to monitor the traffic on her site.

“The activity on my website went up 90 percent once I did the web ad,” Skaar said.

Like Levorson, she, too, shops online a lot. And she agrees that if more stores had a web presence, more Albert Lea online shoppers would make purchases there.

“I think there’s a lot of misconception about what it is going to cost,” Skaar said. “I was surprised it did not cost much.”

Leland knows the value of having what he sells on the web. The real estate business demands it these days.

“The more pictures, the better,” he said. “If you have just one picture on the Internet of a house, they won’t look at the house.”

His firm, Kenneth R. Leland Realty, reaches online house hunters a number of ways. First, it uses its own site, www.lelandrealty.com, and, second, it uses the multiple listing service that many agencies use to disseminate listings to all major search engines. You can find homes in Albert Lea on sites as different as www.semnrealtors.org and www.walmartrealty.com. Yes, even Walmart sells real estate.

Leland said his business has a data entry person who keeps the listings straight. The agents also know how to take quality pictures and upload the photos.

He said the web allows him to handle more transactions at one time and, with the photos, it saves his clients a lot of gas. They narrow their searches faster.

“I can spend more time on doing the showing and writing up the paperwork they haven’t figured out how to take away from us yet,” Leland said.