Steinar Knutsen

How to Make Money Online with the ShareASale Affiliate Marketing Program

Steinar — Wed, 16 May 2012 17:56:54 +0000

What is ShareASale?

Much like LinkShare, ShareASale is an online affiliate program network that includes over 2,500 individual company affiliate programs across numerous industries. ShareASale is unique in that they provide real time stats on performance, which is helpful if you want to see how your sales are doing today.

How do I setup ShareASale?

Visit ShareASale.com to sign up now. All you need is a website and an email address. If you don’t have a website yet head over the Bluehost and register a domain name now (email is included with hosting).

How do I display ShareASale links?

ShareASale provides a variety of linking options which really separate it from the pack.

Link / Banner – You can get a standard link or banner, which depends on the creatives provided by the merchant.

Datafeeds – this is comma separated file you can download one time or ongoing via FTP for direct access to bulk list of links

Coupons and Deals – here’s a great way to weed out the special offers and provide incentives for customers to buy now

Videos – for a truly unique spin on affiliate marketing, ShareASale has a video creation tool that embeds your links into video footage

Widgets – these are pre-configured html blocks that showcase a product with something more than a simple image and link

Custom Links – most merchants allow you to link to any page on their site with this fantastic little time saver of a tool.

Gift Cards – here’s a unique tool in ShareASale that allows you to sell digital gift card for participating merchants.

How do I get paid?

ShareASale tracks all your affiliate earnings and pays out on a monthly basis with a $50 minimum balance. Payments are sent via check or direct deposit.

How to Make Money Online with the Linkshare Affiliate Marketing Program

Steinar — Mon, 14 May 2012 12:55:14 +0000

What is LinkShare?

LinkShare is a fantastic affiliate program directory that includes 1,000’s of affiliate programs from companies in 100’s of different industries and markets. It’s a very easy system to use and because each program is managed by an individual affiliate program manager, there are some unique opportunities to build relationships with these companies and offer even greater value to your customers.

This is really a great solution if there are specific brand name products that you want to promote and they happen to be in their network. For example, if you’re in the candy and flower gifts market, you can apply to promote products from The Popcorn Factory, 1-800 Flowers, Chocolate.com, GourmetGiftBaskets.com and dozens of other online retailers.

LinkShare is also great because they make it easy to create and share a variety of different links. You can choose from banner images, individual product image links, text links and special rotating links depending on how the affiliate programs have setup their offering. As a marketer, this is nice because you can serve a variety of ads that add visual interest to your readers.

How do I setup LinkShare?

Visit LinkShare to get started. In the application process you’ll be asked to indicate your website domain name and the methods of advertising you will employ. You’ll also have a chance to explain what your site is about. Take some time to provide as much detail as you can so that when you apply for individual company affiliate programs, they have the best possible understanding of who you are and why they should approve your application.

How do I display LinkShare links?

Creating links in LinkShare is easy. Once you’ve been approved for a specific affiliate program, you’ll have a plethora of options to choose from including banner ads and images, individual products, text / email links and a set of promotional links based on coupons, hot products, logos, free shipping and best converting products. What’s included in these categories depends entirely on how the affiliate manager setup their programs and what they’ve chosen to make available to affiliates.

LinkShare also has what they call Easy Links. This is a widget in which you select the dimensions, colors and product display options and the widget automatically decides which products to display based on the content on your webpage.

For example, if you have a home and garden information website covering a variety of topics and you have an affiliate relationship with Burpee Garden, your ads will show different products on different pages. this is a great feature if you don’t have the time to create custom ads with every page in your site.

If you have a targeted page on your website for a specific product, I recommend you include a few different links. First, you definitely want a picture of the product – one that links to the merchant’s product page through an affiliate link. You’ll also want 1 or two more links in the body of your text. This maximizes the opportunity for someone to click on your link.

How do I get paid?

LinkShare tracks links from your affiliate links and earnings associated with any purchases made as a result of the traffic to a merchant’s online store. This is all communicated with you from the Account dashboard. Payments to affiliates are made at the end of the month. LinkShare has a $1 minimum threshold, which means that even if you only make $17, you get paid rather quickly unlike other programs which have a much higher minimum threshold.

How the Amazon Associates Affiliate Marketing Program Works

Steinar — Fri, 11 May 2012 15:07:38 +0000

What is Amazon Associates?

Amazon.com is one of the leading online stores for all kinds of products, including books, magazine, music, movies and a plethora of other tangible home and office products. It’s amazing just how many different products are on amazon when you start researching products for your affiliate program.

Amazon Associates is Amazon’s affiliate program that let’s you earn commission on the sale of products from their catalog of goods. It’s a great program for several reasons.

First, because Amazon has been around for so long, most people who buy products online are already familiar with amazon and have a certain level of trust in the quality of products and the ability to make returns. Most people also have an Amazon account as well, so there is a low barrier to entry when it comes time to make a purchase.

Second, Amazon Associates allows you to setup multiple tracking ID’s. You might have multiple tracking ID’s for different niches or markets, or in some cases you might setup different ID’s for various marketing channels, such as social media, email or web marketing. This is very helpful when it comes time to measure results and track performance back to a specific strategy for driving affiliate traffic.

Third, Amazon Associates has a 90 day cookie, which means that if you send someone to Amazon through an affiliate link, you can potentially earn commission on anything they buy for 90 days. For example, you might send them there with a link to a $10 book and they end up buying a $200 Kindle. You just increased your earnings from $.40 to $8.00. Not bad, huh? This is especially nice around the holidays as more people shop online for gifts.

How do I setup Amazon Associates?

Visit Amazon Associates to sign up for an account and get started right away!

How do I display Amazon Associates links?

One of the features I love most about this program is the variety of display options available. This is great because you can create a much more customized presentation of your links that looks good and speaks more effectively to your market vs. just text links or static images.

Some of the links, banners and widget options include:

Product Links
These are text and/or image based links that link to a specific product. you can customize the text in your link and choose how the price is displayed if at all. These are probably the most popular types on links you’ll use in your marketing campaigns, because the are so targeted.
Banners
These are pre-defined graphic images created by Amazon that help you promote some of Amazon’s most popular content. For example, you might want a banner in the header of your website that invites people to check out the latest electronics items on sale for 50% off or more. There are banners in nearly every category across multiple different promotional types. I love banners!
Site Stripe
This is very cool – the site stripe is a toolbar that shows up in your browser window as you navigate through Amazon. If you find a product you want to promote with an affiliate link, you just use the buttons in the Site Stripe to quickly create affiliate links to those products. It really helps speed up the link building process and makes it way more fun. Plus, you can easily share affiliate links on Twitter using the Site Strip as well.
Search Widget
This bit of code allows you to put an Amazon search box on your website. You can target specific product categories and change the color and dimensions to match your site.
Carousel Widget
This allows you to display a visually appealing and interactive, rotating list of products from a category of your choice. You could also select specific product to include in the carousel if you wish.
Deals Widget
As implied, this widget features products from any given category that are on sale. Of course, lower cost products mean lower commissions so use with caution. On the upside, this widget is great as a means to get users into Amazon and begin tracking with the 90 day cookie. They might order something at half price day and something else at full price next month.
MP3 Clips Widget
This is a great little widget for the music lover. It allows users to preview music and buy on the spot. Songs are on the less expensive side but tend to pay a higher commission rate.
aStore Widget
This is a unique widget that allows you to create an entire mini-version of Amazon right within your website. You can have multiple pages of content across different categories that you either hand pick or let Amazon choose for you based on a number of variables. This is a great solution if you want to have a dedicated “Products” page within your site.

This is only a sample of the different options you have for displaying Amazon links and I’m sure you’ll have fun exploring the many other options available.

How do I get paid?

You earn commissions from Amazon Associates when people purchase products on Amazon.com through your affiliate links.

Your referral rates are based on the the volume of purchases people make through your links in a given month. For example, if you sell 1-6 products, you earn 4% on those sales, 7-30 products you make 6%, 31-110 gets you 6.5% and so on. The max percentage payout is 8.5% if you sell 3,131 products in a given month. I hope you achieve that!!!

You get paid once your earnings reach a minimum threshold, such as $10 for direct deposit or gift certificate or $100 if you want them to write you a physical check. If you earn less than the minimum in a given month, those earnings are added to your rolling balance. Once the balance reaching the minimum, you get paid.

Anything special I should know about Amazon Associates?

Most people agree that Amazon Associates is a great affiliate program for all the reasons I’ve mentioned here. Others however find it tough to justify marketing a product if the commission is only 4-6%. For comparison sake, most products on other programs, such as LinkShare, Commission Junction or ShareASale payout at a much higher, usually starting at 6% on the low end.

What this means is that you have to be realistic about the volume of traffic you can send to Amazon and the conversion rate of that traffic to determine a reasonable earnings potential. Compare that same traffic and conversation rate to other programs that offer a higher referral rate, but also keep in mind the nice 90 day cookie and brand recognition that comes with Amazon.

Definitely test out Amazon Associates to see if it’s right for you.

Podcasting on my iPad with the Samson CO1U USB Condenser Microphone and Camera Connection Kit

Steinar — Fri, 11 May 2012 03:18:36 +0000

http://www.mobilepodcaster.com Podcasting directly into your iPad mic is great but some people may prefer better quality audio. In this episode I demonstrate podcasting with the Samson CO1U Condenser Microphone and the iPad Camera Connection Kit via Mobile Podcaster.

If you’re having trouble with your recording volume, I recommend you install Garageband for iPad ($5) and boost the microphone input level. Then when you switch to other recording apps, the mic is noticeably louder. This worked for me.

Here’s a screenshot from Garageband that shows the Input Level slider. Turn it all the way up if necessary.

This podcast episode was recorded on my iPad and automatically uploaded to this website and iTunes using the Mobile Podcaster plugin. For more information visit http://www.mobilepodcaster.com

How the Google Adsense Affiliate Marketing Program Works

Steinar — Tue, 08 May 2012 17:47:50 +0000

What is Adsense?

Adsense is a pay-per-click advertising program owned by Google and is by far one of the most popular affiliate programs out there. Advertisers setup and pay for ads using Google Adwords, and marketers or publishers such as yourself use Adsense to display these ads. Every time someone clicks on one of your Adsense links, you get paid.

What makes Adsense a good choice?

Adsense is a great choice as an affiliate program for beginners because Google does most of the work. When setting up Adsense you only need to really select size and color of the Adsense block and Google will determine based on the content on your site, which specific ads to display. With other affiliate programs, you normally have to specify the exact products you want to promote.

Adsense is also a great choice because the application process is fairly simple using your Google account. There are a few questions you need to answer, including the website on which you’ll use to display ads.

Some other affiliate programs require you to apply to certain programs based on the products you want to promote, the content you have on your website, and the promotional methods you plan to use. Adsense is not as particular on these issues, though they will reject your application if you don’t meet accept the policies outlined in the application process.

How do I set up Adsense?

To apply to Adsense and begin the setup process, visit http://www.google.com/adsense.

How do I display Adsense links?

Adsense links are typically displayed in one of two formats: text or image banners. Text links include 4 or 5 links to participating Adwords merchants including a title, description and link. A banner add is a single image that links to the merchant’s website.

With both text and banner ads, there are several options, including size, # of ads to display, and color. These are required options you must select – pretty much everything beyond that is optional.

Choosing the right format and layout for your marketing will require some trial and error mixed with good taste and good luck. Some experts suggest that you should design your Adsense ads to blend in with your text because people psychologically ignore anything that looks like an advertisement. Other folks suggest that image banner ads in the header and footer perform best.

How you design and implement your ads requires testing. Choose the right combination of format and design that makes sense to you and monitor results closely. Overtime, you will learn what is working best and have some performance benchmarks with which to make some education guesses on to change.

How do I get paid?

You earn money every time someone clicks on one of your Adsense links. Adsense pays affiliates based on the earnings on a monthly basis … 30 days after your balance reaches a minimum of $100. There are two payment method options, check or electronic funds transfer.

Anything special about Adsense?

Because Adsense only pays a few sense per click depending on your industry, it can take a lot of clicks to earn your first $100. Of course, you getting paid just for clicks – the people who clicked on your ad never has to actually buy anything. Hence, Pay-Per-Click. Other programs potentially pay more per click, but in most cases require a purchase to take place.

Introduction to the Most Popular Affiliate Programs

Steinar — Sun, 06 May 2012 12:44:04 +0000

As an affiliate you will promote another company’s products by joining their affiliate program. The affiliate program includes guidelines for promoting their products and the links you’ll use to drive traffic to their product to earn your commission.

Some companies have their own affiliate programs but most companies use an affiliate program network, such as LinkShare, Commission Junction or ShareASale. There are dozens of other networks … these are just three of the most popular networks. They are free to join.

When you apply to become an affiliate, you usually fill out a brief application. Not all networks require this but it’s pretty standard. Once accepted, you get access to an affiliate dashboard where you can find all the links, banner ads, and other forms of link creation services the program offers.

Most affiliate programs track activity and transactions your affiliate links produce. Once you embed some the links on your website and drive traffic to a merchants website through these links, you’ll have access to the details surrounding such activity. For example, what page on your site they came from, what product they clicked on, what they eventually purchased and how much they spent. This information is used to calculate your commissions.

Most affiliate programs track returns or cancelled sales so you can expect a small percentage of commissions to be retracted within a predetermined window of time – 60 days, for example. This varies by program is usually covered in the affiliate agreement when you sign up. It’s normal procedure.

I encourage you to join multiple affiliate program networks, so that you can familiarize yourself with the various programs and have everything setup should you find a product in their catalog to promote in the future. In most cases, affiliates promote products from multiple programs at once based on commission rates, promotions and the functionality of tools within the network to easily deploy new links.

Using affiliate programs to create links is pretty straightforward. They provide with a line or two of html code or a script that you then copy and paste into your website. This may be a banner advertisement in the header section of your site or an individual text link within a blog post. It’s really up to you and the possibilities are seemingly endless. There’s plenty of room to get creative.

Keyword Research for Affiliate Marketing

Steinar — Fri, 04 May 2012 17:38:10 +0000

When you search on Google (or any search engine), the phrase you put into the search form is called a keyword phrase. If you search for something very specific, we call that a long-tail keyword phrase. The search results you see have been indexed by Google because Google thinks they are relevant to your query.

As an online marketer, it is your goal is to find keyword phrases that are related to your product and highly relevant to people searching for your product. This is called keyword research. You want your website and your products to show up in the search engine results when people search for specific keyword phrases … which millions of people do all day long.

The challenge is to find out what these keywords are. It’s pretty easy to rank in search results for random phrases, but the key is to rank for phrases that will drive potential customers seeking your help.

More specifically, you want to find keyword phrases that have relatively high traffic and relatively low competition. Don’t fall into the trap of trying to compete on major phrases within your industry. In most cases that will lead to disappointment because your competing for search engine rankings against major businesses and well-established websites. It’s easier and more effective to go after the lower competition phrases to drive traffic to your website.

There are a number of free tools to conduct keyword research. Unfortunately, they don’t speak to one another and you’ll spend a great deal of time jumping from one tool to the next.

Instead, I recommend you use Market Samurai. I’ve been using Market Samurai since 2008 and it’s highly regarded as the best keyword research tool.

Download a free trial of Market Samurai.
Create a new project with a keyword phrase you think people would use to search online for your product.
Use the Keyword Research tab to generate 100’s of keywords and filter out those that don’t meet your minimum criteria.
Use the SEO Competition tab to uncover search engine ranking opportunities.

Brainstorming a Niche Market for Affiliate Marketing

Steinar — Wed, 02 May 2012 19:52:59 +0000

There are several ways to brainstorm potential markets for affiliate marketing. I highly recommend you keep a notebook with you at all times as you go through this stage, because once your mind starts rolling, you’ll have plenty of ideas. Here are a few sources for market ideas:

Personal Hobbies & Interests

Think about what hobbies and interests you and your friends or family have. Are there any particular products or product categories in those hobbies that stand out as potentially interesting to pursue for affiliate marketing?

For example, maybe you’re a golfer. Every golfer needs a glove, shoes, balls, tees, a bag and of course new gloves. Plus they want to learn new strategies, improve their skills and play great courses. Each of these is an affiliate marketing opportunity and I guarantee you there are companies with affiliate programs for each of these products or services.

Choosing a product or market that you already know something about and has already proven itself interesting is a great path to explore. Affiliate marketing is hard work, but if you find the subject interesting, it will seem more like fun than anything else.

Google Trends

Another great way to explore potential markets is with the use of Google Trends. Visit google.com/trends to get started.

With Google Trends you can enter any search phrase and see a graphical representation of the traffic for that phrase over time. This is especially meaningful if you suspect that your market may be cyclical or likely to fluctuate based on current events.

If there’s enough historical data, Google Trends also provides links to relevant news stories for the given phrase to provide some context the the search trends graph. You can also compare two searches phrases to see how they differ and to what degree one search term is more popular than another.

For, example, do a search for golf shirt and you see that the phrase is rather cyclical with traffic spikes in late Spring and early Summer. You’ll also notice that a majority of the traffic is in South Carolina and Alabama – not surprising since these are big golf states.

Now add a comma to your search and include a comparison with polo shirts. The most obvious take-away is that searches for polo shirts are twice and much as those for golf shirts. You will also see that there is a second spike for polo shirts in late Summer, when weather is still hot yet golf season is definitely waning.

This type of analysis is a fun exercise to get your head around the relative traffic volume for a given phrase. It’s also great to help you brainstorm other variations on that phrase or product as a result of the information Google Trends provides.

Amazon.com

With one of the largest collections of products for sale online, Amazon is a great place to research potential products to promote. Yes, Amazon has it’s own affiliate marketing program, Amazon Associates, but more than that, it has a ratings system and product reviews.

These ratings and reviews can help you justify promoting one product over another based on actual customer feedback. They can also help you learn what’s important to customers when they are buying that product or buying anything with the broader category … both tangible and intangible.

Of course, the simplest way to see what’s selling on Amazon is to search for a product or category and order the results by Best Selling or Most Popular. This is a dead giveaway, right?

Take note, that other affiliate marketers will also be attracted to the top product. It may make sense for you to focus on the 2nd or 3rd products and sell them as an alternative to the #1 product. People often like to buy alternatives if you can spell out why it’s equal to or better than the competition.

Major Affiliate Networks

LinkShare, Commission Junction or ShareASale all have there own list products available for affiliate marketers. Products searchable by category and you can also sort programs by performance.

This is a really great advantage over Amazon, because you can see which products perform well from an affiliate’s perspective. Also, an individual product’s performance can be measured across all categories, so you know if it performs well within it’s category and how it compares to products in different categories.

Again, because everything is so well organized and easy to navigate, these affiliate networks are a great place to brainstorm ideas.

How Do I Get Started with Affiliate Marketing?

Steinar — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 19:47:52 +0000

As with any new initiative or project, you’ll need a certain level of commitment to get going with affiliate marketing. This is not a sprint … it’s more of a marathon. Spend a few minutes right now and decide how much time per week you can dedicate to affiliate marketing. I recommend an hour every few days to get started.

If you spend 3-4 hours per week on affiliate marketing on a regular basis you can really accomplish a lot. I understand you’ll be excited at first and want to spend more time up front so let’s take a look at what the entire process includes.

Define your marketing niche. In this exercise you will explore which products you want to promote. It may be something you love or already have a website for … or it may be something completely new.
Find products to sell. Now that you have a market in mind, it’s time to find products that have affiliate program so you can make some money. Don’t worry, there are tons of options out there!
Setup your website. Now we take a moment to register your domain and purchase a web hosting package. It’s not as scary as it sounds and I’ll explain exactly what to do and why you need to do it.
Drive traffic. You have products on your website and now it’s time to learn how to actually get people to visit your site. We don’t want just any old random people though. We want people who might be interested in buying your affiliate products.
Track results. In an ongoing effort to improve your affiliate marketing performance, you’ll learn how to track visitor behavior and measure results within specific affiliate marketing programs.

This 5-step process is outlined in detail in my book … you can download that below! Don’t feel too overwhelmed.

So, I’m curious … how many hours a week did you decide to dedicate to affiliate marketing?

Can I Really Make Money Online?

Steinar — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 19:42:35 +0000

The fact is that 100,000’s of purchases take place online everyday. Many companies, both big & small are competing for that business and need help driving traffic to their online stores. They use offline promotions, search engine optimization, email marketing, social media and affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing is great for online merchants because for only a fraction of their overall cost they can have an entire army of affiliate marketers on the web promoting their products day and night.

Major corporations, such as Discover, WalMart, Apple, Target and Dell all have affiliate programs. They understand that it’s easier to pay affiliates to reach their target audience rather than try to do this themselves. In a sea of competition, they rely on us to drive targeted traffic to their products and are willing to pay for it.

The degree at which you wish to participate in and earn commission from these e-commerce transactions is entirely up to you. There is no guarantee that you will make any money. You may make no money at all. There is no get rich angle when it comes to affiliate marketing. It takes time and patience to study your market, learn the tools, pick the right products and build out your strategy.

If you do these things well, however, then there is potential to earn money online. Some folks start earning money right away. Some people takes weeks or months to earn their first dollar and then leverage their newfound knowledge to increase their earnings on a regular basis. There are ways to improve your odds for success but no one can predict for sure how much money you will make with affiliate marketing.

Here’s something to consider …

Think about your favorite hobby for a minute. Do you think there are other people who are passionate about that same hobby? Do you think they buy products so they can enjoy or participate in that hobby? Is there a new product in that market that everyone is talking about? Could you write about that hobby and those products on a website? Do you think you could sell those people a product that reflects their interest in that hobby?

If you answered yes to those questions, then there is likely a product available to sell to these people through affiliate marketing. Later, I’ll show you how to do just that!

Do I Need to be a Expert?

Because you are promoting another company’s product, it is not necessary for you to be an expert in that industry or product. Personally, I think it’s good if you know more than the average person about these products, but you may, in fact, know nothing about the products you’re promoting.

How much you need to know about the products you promote will depend on a few circumstances.

If you’re promoting highly technical product, it’s important to at least convey in your web copy the critical information a potential buyer would need in order to make an informed decision.

For example, if you comparing two $2,500 DSLR cameras, you‘ll want to share as many specs about the competing products so the buyer can make the best choice to meet their needs. But … you don’t have to be an expert on the subject. You just need to be reasonably good at writing web copy.

Some products require a bit of information but not nearly the level of detail we see in the camera example. A t-shirt for example, is a product that could practically sell itself based on the image alone. You might need to add a couple lines of text about fabric and washing instructions, but that about it.

… and yes, there is a huge market for t-shirt affiliate marketing.

A couple companies include CafePress and TeamFanShop. T-shirts are great because there is such a low barrier to entry. Everyone wants a t-shirt for something. Find out what gets you excited and find a t-shirt to promote. Like I said, they pretty much sell themselves. Easy, huh?

The other big question most new affiliates have is about technical expertise. I understand that some of you may not understand HTML, URL forwarding or some of the more technical subjects and I’m here to tell you that this will not be a problem.

Everything from building a website to embedding product links and driving traffic can be done with very little technical skill. Most of the affiliate programs understand this potential challenge and have created a wonderful set of user friendly applications and tools to make life easy as an affiliate.

What’s holding you back?

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Steinar — Fri, 27 Apr 2012 19:28:48 +0000

Welcome to the exciting world of affiliate marketing!

Affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting a company’s products to earn a commission either on the act of someone clicking on your link and/or of making a purchase. The beauty of affiliate marketing is that no inventory is required, no product development is necessary and you can get started very quickly with very little investment.

For example, you might have a link on your website to a book that is for sale on Amazon.com. Using Amazon Associates, if someone clicks on your link and purchases that book, you earn a commission based on a percentage of the sale price. This ranges from 4% – 6% and beyond depending on many factors.

Moreover, if that person buys anything else on Amazon over the course of the next 90 days, you may potentially earn a commission on those sales as well. In some cases, such as with Amazon, the more sales you produce in a given month through your affiliate links, the higher your commission rates.

Affiliate marketing is great for people that do not have a product of their own but still want to make money online. Furthermore, it’s a great way for you to learn more about the market potential within a given market niche to determine if it may be worth your time to eventually create your own product to sell online.

Affiliate marketing is not terribly difficult if you invest the necessary time and effort required to research your market, find good affiliate products, setup a website to promote products. Most affiliate programs are free to join and relatively intuitive to use with a bit of guidance.

3 Reasons Blogging Makes Good Business Sense

Steinar — Sat, 14 Apr 2012 20:20:36 +0000

Personally, I love blogging as a means to communicate new strategies to my market. It’ also a great way share tactics I’ve found that can really help companies grow their business online.

One area most businesses are still curious about is the effectiveness of blogging. There are some statistics that suggest blogging is declining, amidst the rise in popularity of social media. This may be true in the short term, but I think those that pursue a blogging strategy will win over the long run.

Here are at least three reasons why blogging is important:

Blogging improves your likelihood of being found on search engines by the right target. Companies that blog receive 55% more visitors than those that don’t because their content is typically full of the keywords searchers are using to find the right site for their needs.
Blogging is a great way to generate links to your site, and companies that blog have 97% more links to their site. Search engines translate inbound links as credibility and legitimacy.
Blogging regularly adds fresh new content to your site, and search engines love that, too. When search engine crawlers go out looking for sites with the content a target is entering in the search bar, they’re attracted to sites that are consistently adding relevant information.
via Why A Blog Needs To Be Part of Your Inbound Marketing Efforts | Business 2 Community.

What’s your experience with blogging as a business. Has it helped drive new traffic and engage your market?

8 Step Social Media Blueprint

Steinar — Sun, 08 Apr 2012 14:11:09 +0000

Something that’s been on my mind lately is the number of questions I get about social media … specifically, how to build and execute an effective social media strategy.

I can definitely relate – social media is not “easy” and, like most initiatives, it takes time, resources and commitment to execute well.

I assume by now most businesses know or at least think there is value in social media, but when it comes to actually doing the work, running campaigns & measuring results things seem to fall apart.

I sincerely hope you’ve had tremendous success using social media to engage your market and grow your business. Regardless, at some point it may be well worth your time to take a step back and evaluate your strategy moving forward.

For this reason, I’ve created the Social Media Blueprint … take some time to explore this with your team. Let me know how it goes!

1. Commitment

Social media is a long-term strategy and as such you need commitment within your organization to succeed. You need folks that have the initiative to actively engage users online and the perseverance required to consistently add value over time.

Do not take this lightly – companies that are not 100% committed will not succeed at social media … and the remains are not pretty.

2. Purpose

As with any marketing initiative, it’s important to understand your goals or desired outcomes ahead of time so that everything you do around that campaign contributes to its overall success. Purpose provides meaning to the people you engage online, value to the content your share and life to the personality you bring to the table.

Spend a good hour with your team brainstorming why and how social media will help you achieve your goals and you’ll be off to a running start.

3. People

Obviously, because this is social media, people are a key ingredient. Identifying the right people internally and externally to target in your campaign can have dramatic impact on your success. You may want to engage key influencers in the market; maybe you want to include exiting customers or strategic partners in mix. Who internally will represent your brand online? Is this an individual or team effort and what role does each person play?

4. Content

One of the most common questions you’ll ask yourself is “What do I say?” Some folks have no problem with this and share anything that crosses their mind. Others are more conservative and share very little. Both strategies are fine, as long as you’re adding value to the conversation.

It may be better to only share one, really amazing piece of content per day, rather than 20 comments that add nothing to the conversation. This will depend greatly on your purpose and personality.

Ideally, the majority of content you share should be content or information that you have created. A successful approach is to setup a blog or YouTube channel to produce this content and share it on your social media platform of choice.

Specifically, I recommend you share three types of content about …

your company / products / services
your community or industry at large
yourself as a person or the people and customers that make up your business

This balanced approach positions your company as a complete entity in social media networks and allows people to engage with you on a business and personal level as a member of the community.

5. Personality

Finding your voice online is a process that may take some time. It’s most important to discuss personality upfront if you’re part of a team. You may be part of a larger organization that includes sales, marketing and customer support. What are the roles each of you will assume and how will you speak with and engage customers? Will you take a casual approach or more professional or rigid stance. Will you answer questions online directly or move conversations offline?

One piece of advice I’ll share is that people want to connect with people. This may seem obvious but many companies simply slap up a logo on most social media platforms and assume that people will feel comfortable or motivated to engage with them. In some cases this can work, if people know the person behind the logo or feel some personal connection with the brand itself, but in most cases it just doesn’t work.

6. Tools

Each social media platform has its own set of tools and native applications. Twitter.com allows you to setup an account, follow people, engage with users, retweet, and so. Facebook.com has a similar set of capabilities that are unique to its platform that provide all the functionality necessary to participate in the network.

It’s important to understand how the native applications operate to build confidence and competence with each network. It takes time depending or your aptitude and dedication, but is worth the effort prior to considering 3rd party applications to manage your social media.

After the initial honeymoon period, you’ll want to find new tools to make social media marketing more effective and efficient, depending on your strategy and resources.

Some popular tools include:

Tweetdeck and Hootsuite – two free, desktop and mobile applications to manage Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in one place
Osfoora, Echofon, TweetBot – popular mobile applications for Twitter
BufferApp and SocialFlow – drip feed content through the day
Smart phones – web and geo enabled phones that provide a range of capabilities to make the most out of social media on the run. Popular options include iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices

7. Process

Managing social media profiles and relationships can seem like a daunting task and some people simply become overwhelmed. Finding the right process can make a world of difference. You should expect to develop the right process over the course of several months; unfortunately, it’s not something that can be easily prescribed prior to diving in.

Here’s a simple template you could modify to help your team stay on top of things.

8. Measurement

At the end of the day, you need to measure results to evaluate the success of social media. There is no standard formula. It depends entirely on your objectives and the meaning derived from the complex array of data you can potentially collect.

At a minimum you’ll want to track links with Bitly.com and analyze user behavior with web stats software such as Google Reader. The key is to see what’s working and adjust your social media mix accordingly.

That’s it. Hope you found this helpful!

Affiliate Marketing Field Guide by Steinar M. Knutsen (Free iPad Download from iTunes)

Steinar — Fri, 23 Mar 2012 20:35:53 +0000

I’m super excited to announce my 2nd book, Affiliate Marketing Field Guide, is now available for download on the Apple iBookstore. If you have an iPad and are at all interested in learning strategies and specific tactics to make money online, you should download your copy now!

About Affiliate Marketing Field Guide

Affiliate marketing is the practice of promoting someone else’s products to earn a commission. How you make money depends on the individual affiliate program.

The Affiliate Marketing Field Guide is packed with practical and actionable best practices to help you get a running start as an affiliate marketer. This includes strategy, process and a sample of some of the most popular tools and tactics to get you started on the right foot.

Specific topics we’ll cover include:

Introduction to Affiliate Marketing
Choosing a Niche Market
Overview of Major Affiliate Programs
Domain Registration and Website Design
Driving Traffic to Your Website
Tracking Results and Measurement

Specifically we’ll discuss LinkShare, ShareASale, Commission Junction, Google WebMaster Tools, Google Analytics, Search Engine Optimization, Aweber, WordPress, Amazon Associates and more!

via iTunes – Books – Affiliate Marketing Field Guide by Steinar M. Knutsen.

Video Playlist: Apple iPad & iPhone Screencasts Demo & Tutorials

Steinar — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 19:24:52 +0000

Here’s a nice collection of demo and tutorial videos of iPad and iPhone apps you might like …

HINT: click on the little square icon in the toolbar next to the CC to see the entire collection.

Can I Really Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing?

Steinar — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 23:47:49 +0000

Here’s something to consider …

If you answered yes to those questions, then there is likely a product available to sell to these people through affiliate marketing.

Demo of Apple iPhoto for iPad using Photo Stream and Tiltshift

Steinar — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 22:47:24 +0000

The new Apple iPhoto for iPad and iPhone was released this week. It’s really pretty awesome. Here’s a screencast demo on my iPad for your enjoyment.

Here’s Apple’s take on the new iPhoto …

It’s everything you love about viewing, editing, and sharing photos — but with the power and simplicity of Multi-Touch. You can quickly organize and compare photos. Brush adjustments onto an image with your finger. Apply professional-quality effects in a single tap. And create beautiful photo journals to share with family and friends. It’s creative control like you’ve never experienced before.
via Apple – The new iPad – Browse featured apps made by Apple..

Why I like iPhoto for iPad

Having only use iPhoto for a couple days there are some reasons I like this app as a great photo editing tool.

Simplicity – much like iPhoto for Mac, this app makes it very simple to crop, edit and share photos without much skill. Even better, iPhoto adds a new set of editing tools, such as tilt shift, that bring it up to speed with other mobile editing apps, such as Instagram and Snapseed.
Integration – as part of the iLife suite, iPhoto plays nice with advanced iOS features such as iCloud, making it easy to automatically import from your Photo Stream and push final images back out.
Beaming – this is a great new feature that allows you to send pictures to other iPhoto users without the hassle of emailing files back and forth.

You can download a copy of iPhoto here.

New iPad Screencast Video – Flipboard for iPad

Steinar — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:20:57 +0000

Flipboard for iPad is a fantastic app for consuming content across Facebook, Twitter, Google Readers, Instagram, and a host of other predefined content partners. The beauty of Flipboard is the visual experience it brings to otherwise pretty bland text based content we see on the web. Links in Twitter are transformed into captivating articles that scrape images and excerpts from their target source. Its my preferred method for reading online and I’m sure you’ll agree it’s a fantastic app.

New iPad Screencast: Muting Twitter Clients with TweetBot for iPad

Steinar — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 22:11:30 +0000

TweetBot for iPad is great because you can apply a Mute Filter to weed out specific individuals, hashtags and Twitter clients.

11 Free Business, Marketing and Sales Goal Setting Templates and Worksheets

Steinar — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 01:52:19 +0000

My previous post on 7 Free Goal Setting Templates has been wildly popular. This post provides a list of resources specifically for business owners, marketing managers and sales professionals.

As I’ve stated before, writing down your goals is the single most powerful thing you can do to achieve your goals.

Here are some goal setting templates and worksheets you might find helpful:

1. Business Goals Template

This template will assist you to determine your business boundaries, identify the business goal, agree the necessary conditions to achieve the goal and the measures you will use to navigate your progress towards the goal.

2. Annual Business Goals Template

In this template we define the goals as annual goals; however, you can choose any time period which suits your needs. You may choose to define yearly, quarterly or monthly goals. Or you may choose to define two different timeframes for your goals such as five year goals and annual goals, or annual goals and quarterly goals.

3. Zig Ziglar Goal Worksheet

This is a straightforward goal setting template from one of the most repeated sales people, Zig Ziglar. This template includes: stating your goal, deadlines, obstacles, people and organization that can assist, benefits, and skills required.

4. Goal Setting Forms for Starting Your Own Business

This template includes an interesting series of questions you might ask yourself if you’re considering starting your own business. The idea is to compare the benefits and opportunities between working for yourself and working for someone else.

5. Goal Setting Worksheet

Another terrific goals setting worksheet that walks you through all the basics: goals, reasons, obstacles, barriers, sacrifices, information & help required, next steps and more.

6. Marketing Calendar Map Template

This template allows you to map out your key marketing initiatives month-by-month over the course of the year.

7. Marketing Mix Goals Template

This is a great set of guidelines and questions to help you define the key information to identify your goals for the next year.

8. Email Marketing Goals Worksheet

Here’s a great email marketing planning worksheet from Aweber that forces you to answer the tough questions about email marketing: why are you running the campaign, how will you measure success, how often will you communicate with them, and more …

9. Your Marketing Goals

This worksheet helps you outline your website and social media goals, conversation rates and resulting traffic and sales.

10. Marketing Worksheet

This is a nice marketing goal setting worksheet that takes several factors into consideration, including budget, target market, roadblocks, opportunities, competitors, clients and social media.

11. Sales Goals Worksheet

Successful salespeople understand that, to a degree, sales is a numbers game. This worksheet helps you calculate the level of activities required to your achieve desired outcome.

Which template(s) did you find most helpful?

Q&A: Why I follow brands on Social Media platforms

Steinar — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 00:40:46 +0000

If your company is considering social media as a platform to connect with you market, you should take some time to examine the opportunity from your customers’ perspective.

It may seem natural to categorize your readers as either customers or prospects but in many cases your brand may mean something more based on a number of factors or circumstances.

Q: In Social Media, do you only follow brands you use?

My question has to deal with loyalty. As a consumer, do you only Follow/Like/etc only those brands that you use yourself? Or do you Follow/Like brands in social media regardless of whether you use them yourself? And if so, why do you Follow/Like them if you don’t actually use them?

A: I follow brands that are interesting to me at some given time for a variety of reasons, whether I have purchased from them or not. I’m not afraid to unfollow brands that no longer provide value to me and/or those that have unapealling social media habits. In fact, your question just prompted me to unLike nearly 30 Facebook Pages and unFollow a couple dozen Twitter users.
Some brand categories I follow:
1) Brands that have products or services that I use, like or want to learn more about, such as Aviiq. Usually, if I just purchased from them I’m either already following them or just started following because I’m interested in what value they offer, specifically related to their product.
2) Brands I’m interested in based on my hobbies, sports and general interests, such as InsideLacrosse. I may never buy from them and, in fact, they may not even have something to sell. The information they share provides a healthy dose of distraction that might otherwise take much longer to consume with other forms of media.
3) Brands that are key influencers, trendsetters, and doing exciting things regardless of their industry, such as Zappos. These are brands I like to learn from because of their business sense and go-to-market strategies. They may be in completely different industries but because they are successful I may be interested and follow them … usually for a shorter period of time.
4) People as Brands – those I find interesting, knowledgable, influential, important to my success, market leaders, etc. Social media has facilitated the rise of some very influential branded individuals, such as Eric Qualman. I follow them not only because I may purchase their products, but also to study their technique and learn from them on an ongoing basis.
Thanks,
Steinar
via In Social Media, do you only follow brands you use? | LinkedIn Answers | LinkedIn.

How to manage social media with a simple schedule of activities

Steinar — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 04:49:03 +0000

For any business, managing social media can easily turn into a full-time job. Fortunately, with practice comes efficiency and a certain flow of regular activities starts to emerge over time.

If your business is looking for a simple schedule of necessary activities to follow, let me recommend you start with the example I’ve outlined below. In this case, I’ve broken down a set of reasonably critical tasks into daily, weekly and monthly categories.

Daily activities center around building relationships and fostering a bond with your market through regular interaction. Weekly activities provide you with a chance to check performance and maintain a certain level of momentum. Monthly tasks focus on extending your reach in new directions and reinforcing your presence where it makes most sense.

Feel free to use this example as a guide and fill in the appropriate activities for your organization.

What activities are most important to the success of your business’ social media strategy?

How to properly use Facebook as a business and network with other businesses

Steinar — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:40:19 +0000

By now your business probably has a business Facebook Page. The question is “what do I do with my Facebook Page?”, “how will my Facebook Page help me grow my business?” and “how can I network with other businesses on Facebook?”

The key for most businesses is that you need to login to Facebook as a business and use your business page like you would use your personal profile to communicate and network with friends. Social media is about socializing afterall – not just broadcasting an endless stream of information without interaction.

Once you login as your business on Facebook, you have several opportunities to engage with others and network with other businesses. In the following video, I illustrate exactly how this is done …

How does your business use Facebook? How has your Facebook Page helped grow your business online?

How I use bitly to create links and track performance

Steinar — Mon, 20 Feb 2012 16:05:37 +0000

If you’re marketing anything online, it’s good practice to track the links you share so you can ultimately measure performance and see what’s driving the right kind of traffic, what visitors are looking for and what they do once they land on your site. Obviously, Google Analytics can help you understand much of this, but customizing your links on the front end is also a valuable practice to help you understand as much as possible about people engaging with your content no matter where it is online.

For example, if you embed a link in a PDF that folks can download from your site, it’s a good idea to use a service, such as Bitly.com to create a custom, trackable shortened link. Then, when anyone clicks on your link, you’ll know about it rather than be completely blind to the fact that people are using your content.

Another example is a link that you include in a book you publish to the Apple iBookstore. Trackable links let you know exactly which content people are clicking on.

The benefit is that you can learn from your users’ behavior and adjust your content delivery accordingly. If I discover that a lot of folks are interested in affiliate marketing based on their click behavior, I’ll probably post more content on that topic. Likewise, if no one has ever clicked on one of my sidebar banner ads, I might consider replacing that content with something more attractive or valuable to my readers.

How I use Google Analytics on a Daily Basis

Steinar — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 18:12:04 +0000

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool that I use pretty much everyday to track visitor activity and behavior.

Specifically, I’m looking at # of visitors, bounce rate, popular content and traffic source. My goal is to discover:

What content is driving traffic and how are visitors finding this content
What keywords are driving the “best” traffic
What channels are delivering traffic – search, social media, comments and other 3rd party sites

Understanding these metrics provides me with insight to create more useful information for my audience. If they seem really interested in social media tools and processes, then I’ll produce more content around those topics.

How are you using Google Analytics or other web analysis tools to understand your market?

How to Build a Website to Host Your Podcast

Steinar — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 15:42:31 +0000

In most cases, you will need a website to host your podcast. I recommend you use WordPress. WordPress is one of the leading blogging platforms available that supports podcasting through the use of plugins that allow you to post your episodes and make them available on iTunes if you want.

Download the PDF version of this article:

Step 1: Register your Domain and Signup for Hosting

First thing you’ll need to do is register you domain name or URL. This is the web address where your new WordPress blog and podcast will live. I recommend Bluehost to register your domain. Specifically, because they offer great products, support and uptime. Furthermore, their Control Panel is very intuitive vs. other registrars and you’ll thank me later for this!

Hosting provides server space for you to store all your WordPress blog files and podcast episodes. This includes the php and css files that drive WordPress plus the MySQL database and other applications required to actually make WordPress operate.

Again, I recommend Bluehost for WordPress hosting because the service and products are top of the line for the price. When you register, sign up for a 2-year hosting package and you’ll get tons of extra products that other hosting companies try to charge extra for such as email account and extra storage space.

Step 2: Install WordPress

Next you need to install WordPress. The simplest way to do this is to use the self-install scripts that come with Bluehost. From your control panel just click on the WordPress Icon in the SimpleScripts section and follow the step-by-step instructions. It’s really pretty straightforward.

Bluehost provides a program which makes it very easy to install WordPress to the root of your site or to a subdirectory.

1. Navigate to the Software / Services section inside cPanel. Click the Simple Scripts icon. This will display the page where the third party scripts can be installed from.

2. Click on WordPress.

3. Click the Install Now button.

4. Select the version to install and the domain name to install it to. You can enter a subfolder such as ‘blog’ or leave it blank if you want the site’s main page to be the blog.

5. Click on the Advanced Options.

6. Give your site a name or tagline, describing the site. Uncheck the box which says ‘Generate a random Administrator Username and password’. Enter a username and a password which are different that your cPanel login information.

7. Read through the license and service agreements and check the boxes. Select the ‘Complete’ button.

Step 3: Get a WordPress Theme

WordPress comes with one standard theme but you can import new themes to give your site a more custom look and feel to your blog. It could be something fancy or maybe you prefer something more minimalist. In any case there are 1,000 of themes to choose from – both free and premium.

I have two favorite themes right now for someone who has limited programming skills but wants a theme that is dynamic and easy to customize.

You can also find plenty of WordPress themes available to choose from for free directly within the WordPress Admin section in the Appearance > Themes tab.

Step 4: Install a Podcasting Plugin

You’ll need a podcasting plugin to properly display your podcast episodes so visitors can play the MP3 files you attach to your blog posts.

The two most popular pludgins are:

Option 1: Podcasting Plugin by TSG
Option 2: BluBrry PowerPress Plugin

Follow the instructions provided by these two plugins and you’ll be good to go.

I also use Mobile Podcaster as a means to record and publish my podcast directly to iTunes from my iPad or iPhone.

Congratulations!

Why podcasting is such a valuable marketing channel

Steinar — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 00:02:37 +0000

Podcasting is a wonderful marketing channel that is widely misunderstood. I love the fact that for free you can basically have your message heard by potentially tens and even hundreds of millions of people.

I think most people shy away from podcasting because they don’t understand the potential reach. The tools are not as well understood as blogging, so that is probably another reason that it’s not as widely used by marketers.

Listen or Download

This podcast episode was recorded on my iPhone and automatically uploaded to this website and iTunes using the Mobile Podcaster plugin. For more information visit http://www.mobilepodcaster.com

How to Podcast with Garageband and Publish on iTunes

Steinar — Mon, 23 Jan 2012 14:02:39 +0000

In this course, I show you exactly How to Podcast with Garageband and Publish on iTunes. This is great because listeners may now listen to your podcast on your WordPress blog and subscribe to your podcast on iTunes.

The lectures are recorded with professional video screen capture software, so it feels like you’re sitting right next to me. Customers have responded very well to this over the years.

First, you’ll learn how to use Garageband to make your recordings. I’ll show you how to edit your file, apply various equilizer settings, and trim your recording. Then we’ll add a musical introduction to the recording and save it as an MP3. Next you’ll learn how to install WordPress, setup WordPress for podcasting, upload your podcast and submit it to iTunes so others may enjoy!

How to Podcast with Garageband and Publish on iTunes

Please Don’t Complain to Me About Facebook’s Data Use Policy

Steinar — Sun, 22 Jan 2012 21:05:38 +0000

I got an email today from a visitor on my site who was concerned about my Aweber email newsletter sign up form. Aweber uses the Facebook API to detect if you are signed into Facebook, and if you are it preloads the form with your email address. It also indicates your number of friends.

Facebook’s integration into Aweber provides no additional information to me about you. In fact, there’s really no benefit to me other than it makes it easier for you to fill out my newsletter signup form.

The Facebook API is used by millions of sites to access your Facebook information in one way or another. Facebook has a bunch of Social Plugins to facilitate this and they are free to use by anyone.

I understand that it may seem like an invasion of privacy to see your Facebook information and stats on 3rd party sites, but Facebook has made the details of how they can use your data pretty clear.

It’s not my job to justify their platform or defend their policies. As a member of Facebook it’s your responsibility to understand that stuff. If you want to learn more about how Facebook uses your data you can contact Facebook with your Privacy Concern or read the Facebook Data Use Policy.

Facebook Data Use Policy
Information we receive and how it is used. Learn about the types of information we receive, and how that information is used.
via Data Use Policy.

First Impressions of Apple iBooks Author

Steinar — Sat, 21 Jan 2012 01:16:29 +0000

Apple launched iBooks Author this week and it’s pretty amazing. Basically, it’s free software that allows you to create media-rich, interactive ebooks. It’s available for download on the Mac App Store.

Typically, this has been a pretty difficult task, but iBooks Author is so simple because it plays nice with Pages, Keynote and several other forms of media available on your Mac.

I spent a couple hours working in iBook Author and after importing some existing content from Pages, I had an ebook ready to publish rather easily and quickly.

What do you think about iBooks Author? Let me know when your book is online!

GoToWebinar: #12 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Mon, 09 Jan 2012 19:50:48 +0000

What is GoToWebinar?

Reach your target audience quickly and affordably. Use the GoToWebinar self-service interface to plan, present, record and analyze unlimited Webinars with up to 1,000 attendees each – all for one flat fee. Create and host your own professional Webinars from day one – no experience required

Reach hundreds of people – right from your PC or Mac®
Save with built-in VoIP and phone conferencing at no extra charge
Includes GoToMeeting® for smaller meetings

Key Features

Download an audience list ranked by interest level to focus follow-up efforts on your hottest prospects, lowering your overall cost per lead.
Present online to anyone, anywhere, reducing your costs by decreasing travel and customer acquisition expenses.
GoToWebinar flat fee pricing structure lets you conduct unlimited Webinars without raising your costs – achieving faster and higher ROI.

Try it FREE for 30 Days!

Why do I need GoToWebinar?

GoToWebinar® features make it simple for you to set up, conduct and analyze Webinars yourself – no need to pay for additional event-management services. Increase your audience size while reducing your overall presentation costs with easy-to-use GoToWebinar. Make presentations in real time to hundreds of customers, prospects and employees — wherever they are. Plus, GoToWebinar comes with GoToMeeting, for smaller, more collaborative online meetings.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Grasshopper: #11 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 19:34:55 +0000

What is Grasshopper?

The Grasshopper virtual phone system helps entrepreneurs sound more professional and stay connected from anywhere. Features include toll free and local numbers, custom greetings, multiple extensions for employees, call forwarding to any phone anywhere in the world, voicemail to email and more!

Get a Toll Free or Local Number With Multiple Extensions – Add department & employee extensions easily.
Get Voicemails and Faxes via Email – No more calling in to check messages. Just open the attachment.
Know Who’s Calling Before Accepting the Call – Hear the caller’s phone number or name, the choice is yours.
Read Voicemails – A transcription of voicemail is included with emails.

Key Features

Toll free or local number – local or national presence
Unlimited extensions – for departments & employees
Call forwarding - work from anywhere
Voicemails via email – play online or on cell phone
Manage online or by phone – no hardware to purchase
No Long Term Contracts

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Grasshopper?Unlike a traditional phone system, Grasshopper is managed all online and in the cloud – there’s no hardware to purchase and no software to install. It’s really so easy to setup a new phone number or extension and expand your company’s footprint. Plus, since it’s month-to-month with no long term contracts, it’s also a popular solution for short-term marketing campaigns or temporary contact requirements.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

2011 YouTube Video Traffic Review

Steinar — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 00:13:45 +0000

As many of your know I like to shoot a lot of video. In fact, I published 61 videos on Youtube in 2011 – you can see them here on my YouTube channel. I have several other YouTube channels too, but I’m not going to refer to those in this post.

I like video as a communications channel for several reasons:

sometimes it’s better to illustrate a point show & tell style
shooting video or screencasts are so easy it’s almost irresistible for me
search engines love video (Google owns YouTube)
video keeps the reader’s attention longer than text
video is mobile friendly

Of course, if you’re not comfortable putting your face in front of the camera, the prospect of doing video isn’t really going to sounds very apealling. It won’t be terribly fun and your viewers will probably sense your lack of confidence or enthusiasm.

A good remedy is to record a quick video every day for 30 days and keep them private – this helps you find your voice, learn the tools & process and gain some confidence. Also, spend some time on YouTube watching others. Explore their styles and consider what might work best for you.

My video stats from 2011

Here’s a snapshot of my YouTube channel performance in 2011. Overall, I’m pretty pleased, but there are areas for improvement.

Performance – # of views at 33,441 is OK. This represents a 10% increase over last year and really could have been a lot higher. My most popular videos had to do with iPads and Podcasting, so those seem like a popular subjects to build on. I’m in the process of building a podcasting app and service for podcasting on the iPad so this is a no brainer.

I’m pretty happy to see 57 new subscribers; this gives me some sense of value. Unfortunately, it’s less than the net number of new subscribers in 2010 of 90, but I think I know the answer.

You see, in 2010 I did a series of videos on podcasting from your Mac using Screenflow. I worked really hard on them and people took note. I’ve gotten tons of comments and the reaction has been nothing but positive.

In 2011, I published a similar series on Facebook Pages for Business, but recorded the videos with Screenr in more of a rapid fire mode. Because Screenr videos are limited to 5 minutes and do not provide any editing capabilities they weren’t nearly as impressive as the 10 minute, finely tuned videos from 2010. Don’t get me wrong – the content was great, but the presentation was not as memorable and thus fewer people subscribed to my Channel.

YouTube Activity Impact on Website Traffic

I often preach that video is critical to driving traffic an retaining visitors once they reach your site. Let’s take a look at how this unfolded in 2011.

This first snapshot shows that I received 311 visits, with 1.95 pages per visit, average time of 1:50 and bounce rate of 63.3%. All of these metrics perform better than my entire site on average.

I also see 75% new visits, which is 12% less than my site on average, but this is OK because it tells me that I have loyal viewers on YouTube.

Key Takeaways for 2012

I’m going to keep publishing video in 2012. It drives great traffic and pages on my site that have videos embedded have better visitor stats than average. I also really enjoy producing and publishing video and feel like it’s going to continue to develop as the preferred media for online communication.

This year, I’m also going to use Screenflow more strategically as my main video production tool. The quality of output is just so much better than any other screen capture process I’ve used. Sure, it takes a bit longer to use Screenflow vs Screenr, Jing or Quicktime, but it’s time well spent.

How’s video working for you and your business? Do you get much traffic from YouTube? What are you doing to leverage video in 2012?

My New Video Introduction for New Site Media

Steinar — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 19:38:02 +0000

I do a lot of video – some for this blog and some for my company at New Site Media. I’ve tried a variety of video introductions using some of the preconfigured transitions in iMovie but thought it was time to get a little creative and make my own from scratch. I considered using Fiverr for a minute, but knew I could create my own in about 30 minutes.

To create my intro I used a combination of Photoshop, Keynote and iMovie.

First, I separated the elements of my logo in Photoshop. Specifically, I created a standalone image of the red box portion of my logo.

Next, I recreated the text portion of my logo in Keynote and imported the red box as an image. I also created the black line as a separate image in Keynote. When I was finished, I had four distinct elements.

Using the Build Inspector in Keynote I created a series of Build-in effects for the four components.

“New Site” is set to Move In
The line is set to Pop
“Media” is set to Typewriter
Red Box is set to Anvil

Each Build element is set at 1 second intervals to automatically transition through the series to complete the entire build.

Next, I recorded the presentation in Keynote using the builds, and exported the presentation as a Quicktime Movie including the recorded transitions.

Then started a new project in iMovie and dragged the .mov file into the new project. I added a couple sounds and that’s it!

Now I have a unique video intro I can use on all my future videos.

What do you think? Let me know if you need help doing something similar.

OptimizePress: #10 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:44:13 +0000

What is OptimizePress?

Many of the world’s top Internet Marketers, Experts, Speakers and Coaches use OptimizePress to build their sales pages, launch funnels, membership sites or squeeze pages. It’s simply the easiest way to create an online sales funnel fast. It’s packed with customization options and built-in graphics that would take hours or days to replicate.

OptimizePress Theme – Utilize the power of this theme on as many of your OWN domains as you want, and start creating amazing pages in minutes!
Complete Page Building Solution – Now you no longer need to mess around with HTML, CSS, just use OptimizePress to build all your sales pages, squeeze pages, launch pages, bonus pages and more …
Unique Shortcode Sales Letter Building System – No longer do you have to worry about paying designers to clean up your sales letters – simply use our own super-powerful shortcode system to add in all the elements you want on your pages, just point and click!

Key Features

Build High Converting Squeeze Pages with over 10 tested and proven designs for your squeeze pages or landing pages to increase your optin rate and build your list fast
Create Powerful Product Launches with a custom launch sequence inside OptimizePress and use our advanced features to increase your visitor response.
Build Sales Letters, Bonus Pages, One-Time Offer Pages based on proven & tested designs, so you can give your pages a boost before you even start writing your sales copy!

Get Started Today!

Why do I need OptimizePress?

OptimizePress has been designed to make everything super easy. This includes integrating with your chosen autoresponder, which can usually be a real pain. Simply copy and paste the main form code your autoresponder provider gives you into OptimizePress, and our system will do the rest, including integrating the form with our custom styled input boxes and your optin button!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

LinkedIn is Top Social Media Channel for B2B Marketers

Steinar — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 01:27:30 +0000

LinkedIn is the smallest and oldest of the big 5 social media platforms, yet is surprisingly the preferred social media marketing channel among B2B marketers according to a recent study by Safefrog Marketing Greoup.

Survey respondents often cite LinkedIn as the top social media site for B2B marketers, but others put Facebook and Twitter above the business-minded social network. According to Sagefrog Marketing Group, in summer 2011, 58% of US B2B marketers that used social media used LinkedIn, compared to 50% for Facebook and 43% for Twitter.
via More B2B Marketers Embrace Social Media Efforts – eMarketer

LinkedIn is great for B2B Marketers for several reasons:

1) LinkedIn is based on your professional business resume, so folks on LinkedIn are in a business frame of mind. Facebook and Twitter, on the other hand, are more personal in nature.

2) LinkedIn puts business in the forefront with robust business profile pages. Businesses can upload their logo and fill out a thorough description of their product or service. Employees can link their individual LinkedIn profiles to the corporate profile, providing a great system to network B2B relationships.

3) LinkedIn Groups offer a great environment to share ideas and resources among your peers, customers, prospects and other parties that either currently do business with you or would like to engage in some level of business related discussion.

This is just three reasons, but the list goes on. Are you using LinkedIn as a marketing channel for your business? What’s working for you?

DropBox: #9 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 16:22:13 +0000

What is Dropbox?

Dropbox allows you to easily store and share files online in either a private or public setting. Dropbox works hard to make sure that all your files are the same no matter where you’re working from. This means that you can start working on a computer at school or the office, and finish from your home computer.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere.
Invite your friends, family and teammates to any folder in your Dropbox, and it’ll be as if you saved that folder straight to their computers.
Dropbox is like a time machine that lets you undo mistakes and even undelete files you accidentally trash!

Key Features

2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available.
Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website.
Dropbox works with Windows, Max, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry.
Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection.
Send people links to specific files in your Dropbox rather than emailing huge files back and forth.

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Dropbox?

People around the world rely on Dropbox to help them design buildings, compose music, run businesses, write books and even coordinate disaster relief. Whether you’re an entrepreneur or a teacher, a photographer or an astronomer, an artist or an activist, Dropbox simplifies your life. Dropbox also makes it super easy to share with others, whether you’re a student or professional, parent or grandparent. Even if you accidentally spill a latte on your laptop, have no fear! You can relax knowing that Dropbox always has you covered, and none of your stuff will ever be lost.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Commenting on Blogs for Knowledge, Brand Building and Market Leadership

Steinar — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 18:54:22 +0000

Commenting on other blogs is a fantastic strategy for building your brand online. So few people leave comments these days that you can easily differentiate yourself with this simple tactic. Not only does commenting get your name out there, it also gives you a chance to learn something new and connect with other thought leaders within your industry.

In my daily routine, I scan all of the blogs that I subscribe to in Google Reader. My goal is to choose three blog posts that I find interesting and leave my comment. I find that this gives me exposure to readers on that website, and often drives traffic back my website.

Do you comment on blogs on a regular basis? I’d love to hear your feedback.

Listen or Download

MindNode: #8 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 15:45:37 +0000

What is MindNode?

MindNode Pro and MindNode are elegant and simple-to-use mind mapping applications for the Macintosh that help to 1) visually collect, classify and structure ideas and 2) organize, study and solve problems.

Available for Mac, iPad, & iPhone
Visually Appealing Mind Maps. There is no need to spend hours playing with the visual attributes to create an appealing mind map. The default values are suitable for most uses.

Key Features

Constrain node width and resize nodes. Automatically constrain the width of a node and to resize the node directly on the canvas.
Node Well. New nodes are created by simply dragging them out of the node wells. There is no need to access the toolbar or the application menu.
Multiple Mind Maps. The ability to create multiple mind maps on one canvas makes MindNode Pro an ideal tool for brainstorming sessions.

Why do I need MinNode?

Get Started Today!

Mind maps can be used for many different tasks – including to-do lists, brainstorming, holiday planning, research, writing, project management – and in many different environments – school, meetings, workspace. Personally, I like to use mind maps to outline blog posts and podcast episodes among other tasks. MindNode Pro includes the same features as the free MindNode version, and adds several new features that help improve your productivity.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Skitch Image Capture: #7 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 14:25:33 +0000

What is Skitch?

Skitch is Mac desktop and Android mobile image editing tool that lets you grab, annotate, edit and share your screenshots and images fast. Skitch revolutionizes basic image editing tasks, delivering a quick and easy tool that offers most image editing features you’ll use day to day.

Screenshots are easy: Skitch makes grabbing a screenshot a mouse click or keyboard command away. Crosshairs Snap, Fullscreen Snap or a Frame Snap made easy
Image indexing: every image you edit in Skitch is saved within the program so you can easily browse through anything you’ve previously created.
Upload to your own site: using Skitch, you can also directly upload any picture to any web server via FTP.

Key Features

Image resizing: Open an image or drag one directly into Skitch.
Image cropping: drag any point of the image in the direction you want for a quick crop.
Text or drawings: type, use your mouse or even a graphics tablet to quickly add anything to an image.
Webcam shot: if you’ve got a webcam, you can use Skitch to take shots with it.
Share on Twitter: any image hosted on Skitch is a shortcut away from a Twitter post.

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Skitch?
Besides being completely free, it’s the range of features Skitch offers quickly and simply. It’s not a Photoshop replacement (I still use Photoshop on occasion) nor does it pretend to be. What Skitch offers is 95% of every image editing function I use on a daily basis without the bloat of Photoshop so image handling is that much quicker.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Catalyst Theme for WordPress: #6 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 14:00:52 +0000

What is the Catalyst Theme?

Catalyst isn’t your typical WordPress Theme. It’s not just a cookie-cutter template to slap on the face of your site. Catalyst is more of a design platform. It gives you the flexibility to create a site that’s unique. With over 800 custom options at your fingertips, what you can create with Catalyst is only limited by imagination.

Search Engine Optimization – Catalyst is built from the ground up with SEO in mind, so that your site has a fighting chance to rank among competing sites on search engines.
Ideal for Developers & Non-Developers – A beautiful user dashboard makes Catalyst stand out from the crowd with over 800 custom options. Great for both the seasoned WordPress developer and novice alike.
Unlimited Custom Layouts – Unlike the majority of WordPress Themes and Frameworks, Catalyst has unlimited custom layout development capabilities.

Key Features

Unlimited Custom Layouts, Widgets & Hook Boxes Provide Amazing Flexibility
The Dynamik Child Theme Provides Over 800 No-Coding Design Options
Create Your Own Custom Child Themes With A Single Mouse Click
A Custom CSS Building Tool That Writes Custom Code For You!
The Most Comprehensive Font Control Offered In A WordPress Theme!

Get Started Today!

Why do I need the Catalyst theme?
Catalyst makes WordPress website design easy! No need to purchase a new theme every time you want to change the look and feel of your site – just create a new child theme in Catalyst and let your imagination go wild!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

WishList Member: #5 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 14:35:28 +0000

What is Wishlist Member?
Trusted by over 31,102 online communities and membership sites worldwide, WishList Member is a powerful, yet easy to use membership solution that can turn any WordPress blog into a full-blown membership site.

Integrates With Your WordPress Site – Whether you’re building a new site or integrating with an existing WordPress site, installing WishList Member is a breeze.
Multi-Level Access – Give your members access to multiple levels within your membership. For example, create a central download location with access granted to members of all levels.
Control Viewed Content – Just click the “Hide” button to protect exclusive content for members of a particular level. Create “modular” memberships and hide content from other levels.

Key Features

Just unzip and upload the plugin, and within minutes you’ll have your own membership site up and running.
Unlimited Membership Levels
Protected, members-only content, integrated payments, member management, and so much more!
Seamlessly integrates with the most popular shopping cart systems.
Graduate your members from one level to the next for sequential content delivery

Get Started Today!

Why do I need Wishlist Member?
WishList Member makes the process of building a membership site as easy as possible, so you can start creating a powerful online community of your own right away. No other system makes it so simple to sign up new members and deliver content behind a series of flexible membership levels. Charge for access if you wish or create an open membership. It’s up to you and WishList Member makes it easy!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Hootsuite: #4 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Sun, 18 Dec 2011 18:41:51 +0000

What is Hootsuite?

Hootsuite is the leading social media dashboard to manage and measure your social networks. Hootsuite is an online application – no software to install!

Save your time and your sanity. Monitor and post to multiple social networks, including Facebook and Twitter using the HootSuite dashboard.
Show off your social media success. Create custom reports from over 30 individual report modules to share with clients and colleagues. Track brand sentiment, follower growth, plus incorporate Facebook Insights and Google analytics all without leaving the dashboard.
HootSuite’s Pro and Enterprise plans allow you to have multiple contributors to your social profiles without sharing passwords. Assign messages for follow-up and track responses.

Key Features

Manage multiple social profiles
Schedule messages and tweets
Track brand mentions
Analyze social media traffic
Mobile apps for those on the go
Direct feed from you blog to Twitter
Upload images and links
Popular browser extensions

Why do I need Hootsuite?
HootSuite helps organizations use the social web to launch marketing campaigns, identify and grow audience, and distribute targeted messages across multiple channels.

Using HootSuite’s unique social media dashboard, teams can collaboratively schedule updates to Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, WordPress and other social networks via web, desktop or mobile platforms plus track campaign results and industry trends to rapidly adjust tactics.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Bluehost: #3 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 20:28:59 +0000

What is Bluehost?

From the business owner to the individual who desires full functionality on a small budget, Bluehost provides your complete web hosting solution.

BlueHost has WordPress hosting built in. Their one-click installs with SimpleScripts make it super fast to spin up test sites or new blogs quickly.
Bluehost has been providing quality web hosting solutions since 1996 and provides a consistent experience for your website without all the ups and downs normally associated with every other shared hosting provider.
$6.95/month is a killer deal. Sure you can save a couple of bucks if you hunt around, but is it worth it? Trust me, I’ve tried and it’s NOT.

Key Features

UNLIMITED Disk Storage
UNLIMITED Domain Hosting
Free Domain Name
Secure Email Support
UNLIMITED GB of Site Transfer
Add-on Domains, Subdomains and Parked Domains
cPanel Account Control Panel
FTP Access
Web File Manager
Secure Shell (SSH) Access
Spam Assasin Protection
MySQL Databases
PHP 5 and more!

Reserve your domain!

Why do I need Bluehost?
Bluehost technology is really what sets them apart from other companies. They have their own datacenter, their build their own servers, they have their own nationwide fiber network, they build their own custom linux kernel. In short, because they handle every aspect of your hosting you can feel confident that if there is a problem that you won’t have to deal with 5 different companies to get your problem solved.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Aweber: #2 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 01:13:28 +0000

Aweber is my #2 essential online marketing tool for 2012. I’ve been using this service since 2007 and absolutely love it to this day.

What is Aweber?

Aweber offers industry leading, affordable opt-in email marketing that enables you to boost your website’s traffic and convert more sales.

Industry-Leading Deliverability: Get your emails to the inbox, not junk folders, with deliverability rates exceeding 99 percent.
Email Newsletters and Autoresponders: You set the date and time you want your newsletter to be sent, and they’ll get it delivered. Autoresponders will be automatically delivered at the intervals you specify.
Analytics: Find out who is (and isn’t) opening, clicking, downloading and buying from your emails. You can use this information to improve future sends, create new targeted groups of subscribers and find ways to improve your results.

Key Features

Collect, manage and segment your subscribers across multiple lists.
Use email autoresponders to deliver a sequence of messages automatically.
Over 150 ready-to-use, customizable HTML email templates and forms
12+ years experience delivering email marketing campaigns help you reach the inbox.
RSS to email tool turns your latest blog post in an email newsletter.

Why do I need Aweber?
For the highest ROI, AWeber provides the tools to create, manage, analyze and optimize your email marketing. If you don’t have a full team of copywriters, designers and developers, AWeber makes it easy to do it yourself. We also make it easy for agencies and freelancers to use our service, so whichever route you take, you’re covered.

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

Market Samurai: #1 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Steinar — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 03:08:20 +0000

What is Market Samurai?

Market Samurai is software for your Mac or PC that streamlines all critical search engine marketing tasks, puts complete market intelligence at your finger-tips, takes away uncertainty, and gives you focus, direction and confidence in your internet marketing.

It slashes time wasted on tasks that don’t directly create results – allowing you to put your focus into the areas where you will receive the best returns for your unique online business;
It tells you exactly what you need to do next – by using decision-making data that is specific to your unique market – meaning you don’t get lost, confused or sidetracked – and every ounce of energy is effective;
AND it helps you complete critical internet marketing tasks faster, more easily and, efficiently, and achieve better results than ever before

Key Features

Find out how to uncover “gold-nugget” keywords – each of these keywords can send hundreds, even thousands of free visitors to your site each day.
Stop attracting time-wasting tire-kickers to your web-site, and target the keywords in your market that real buyers are using right now.
Discover exactly how to beat the competition, and get front-page rankings in Google for high-traffic keywords in weeks or days – not months or years.

Download Your Free Copy!

Why do I need Market Samurai?
Every web-site needs traffic if it’s going to succeed – and the most reliable, consistent, profitable, high-volume source of traffic comes from search engines. All it takes is getting 4 SIMPLE things right! – the 4 Golden Rules … but 99% of sites get these 4 things wrong (without even realizing it at the time). As a result, the odds of success are stacked against them, making good profits (not even big profits) becomes a massive struggle and, as a result, 99% of sites fail!

Download the complete list of 12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012!

12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012

Steinar — Tue, 13 Dec 2011 22:04:01 +0000

The list of products and services chosen for this year’s list are products that I use on a regular basis. Some of them are free and others are paid services. In my experience, the combination of these products provides a platform to execute online marketing campaigns more efficiently & effectively.

… thus, I am sharing them with you!

Listen as I explain this year’s lineup …

Listen or Download

This year’s list covers a broad range of leading products and services, including keyword research, email newsletter management, file storage, website hosting, contact management, image capture, video capture, mind mapping, social media, WordPress custom themes, online lead generation, membership site management and webinar hosting.

After 15 years of marketing online, it is clear to me that there is more than one way to get things accomplished. In the early days, I relied heavily on free tools and my own programming & marketing skills to make things happen. In almost every case, there is an alternative route, tool, application or service that is equally capable of getting the job done. Trust me, I’ve tried a lot of tools over the years!

How to add a Search Form in Navigation Bar for Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 22:10:16 +0000

The ability to add a search form in the main navigation menu bar of your WordPress blog is an awesome feature of the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework. This really makes it so easy without any coding. I also like the ability to change the search form language and button text.

Click here to get your copy of the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework now!

Adjust header tagline width in Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 21:41:38 +0000

This video shows you how to adjust the width of the header tagline in WordPress with the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework. Sometimes your tagline is too long and this is one option to prevent your tagline from wrapping into two lines. This is pretty painful to accomplish on regular WordPress themes, but Catalyst makes it pretty easy.

Click here to get your copy of the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework now!

How to add Google Webmaster Tools to Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 19:58:02 +0000

How to add Google Webmaster Tools to Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework. In this video I show you how easy it is to add the webmaster tools script. With other themes this process is not so obvious.

Click here to get your copy of the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework now!

How to add sidebar content Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:51:16 +0000

Adding content to the sidebar of your WordPress site is a common task. Here I demonstrate how to add an image in the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework.

Click here to get your copy of the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework now!

Review of SEO options for Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 18:32:18 +0000

The Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework has a great set of built-in SEO options. In this video I show you some of the settings I use and how you might set up your site as well.

Learn more about Catalyst here!

How to install Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 16:51:35 +0000

The Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework is the best WordPress theme in my opinion. In this video, you’ll learn how to install Catalyst and start creating a highly customized website built on a WordPress blog.

Get a copy of Catalyst now!

How to get started with affiliate marketing for passive income

Steinar — Sat, 10 Dec 2011 02:17:17 +0000

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make passive income online. Essentially this is the process of selling other company’s products for a commission on the sale. For example, you might sell a $50 product and get 6% or $3.00. With a good amount of traffic though your affiliate link, this could multiply into a decent amount of income.

Affiliate marketing is a great way to make money online. Today we’ll discuss Linkshare and how you can get started.

Listen or Download

I started exploring affiliate marketing in 2005 after blogging about the Olympics since 2001. I had a steading flow of traffic to my sites and wanted to monetize them somehow. I tried Adsense but that didn’t seem too promising.

I did some research and discovered a few leading affiliate programs: Linkshare, ShareaSale and Commission Junction. These sites basically serve as the middleman between you and the merchant.

Basic Steps to Get Started with an Affiliate Marketing Site

Before you get started with affiliate marketing, you need a website. The fastest way to do this is get hosting at Bluehost and do an auto install of WordPress. There are tons of great free themes or for a more sophisticated set of customization options check out the Catalyst WordPress Theme.
Once you’ve registered your website, visit the affiliate program sites (Linkshare, etc) and sign up for an account. There you’ll find dozens of categories and 1,000 of merchants with millions of products you can promote on your website. It’s easy to search and find the right products that match your niche.
Once you find a a few good merchants, apply to become an affiliate for their program. Some programs will approve your application immediately, while it may take a day or two for others to let you in or reject you based on a number of potential reasons.
Upon approval, you’ll have access to a plethora of links for each merchant. You’ll see text links, banner links, individual product links and some customizable links. Most affiliate programs also have a feed that you can subscribe to or download so that you no longer have to manually login to see what’s new. It’s really pretty amazing how quickly you can start grabbing HTML code for these links and build out your new website.
Put the links on your site and once someone purchases something a record of the transaction will appear in your affiliate program account. Depending on the program you’ve chosen, you can expect to get a check for your commissions within 30-60 after your total reaches a set minimum. Payouts usually come in the form of check, direct deposit or PayPal.

Have you tried affiliate marketing? What’s worked for you?

3 SEO Strategies You Can Execute Right Now

Steinar — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 02:09:25 +0000

Search engine optimization is something that all bloggers and online marketers address at some point. The goal is to drive more targeted to your site, but it seems as though the rules keep changing. Let’s explore at least three SEO strategies you can execute right now.

Listen or Download

1) Join Google Plus

Social media is obviously playing an increasingly important role in how people find information online and connect with brands in a meaningful way. Search engines recognize this and have, therefore, changed their algorithms to put social media in the spotlight.

The most recent evidence of this is the launch of Google Plus, an 80 million member strong social media platform run by Google. In the past it was common to find Facebook and Twitter content in Google search results, but in 2011 Google scrapped those relationships and now shows Google Plus content instead.

To take advantage of this I encourage you to set up a Google Plus account. Complete your profile as well as possible including information about you, locations you’ve lived, where you work, what you do, links to other online profiles & websites and your profile picture. Add a few new posts, including one to your website. Upload a few images and videos if you can. You want to send a signal to Google that your onboard and ready to participate.

Of course, the real power of Google Plus is the community, so start adding people to Circles. Comment on their posts, +1 their content and share their posts to your Circles. Mention them in you posts too. If you have a business, setup a Google Plus Page and repeat the steps above.

This entire process should take no more than about an hour and will establish a great baseline for you and your new relationship with Google. The key is to get your profile setup now, so that your “start date” is locked in. Google tends to place importance on the age of domains and other online assets, so consider this your first warning to get things rolling early.

2) Write Great Content

Writing unique content on your blog has and always will be a valuable method for driving search engine traffic to your site. Blogging on a regular basis sends a signal to Google that your website is relevant, among other things.

Personally, I like blogging because it forces me to really dive into important issues within my industry and provide additional clarity to my customers so they can make sense of what’s happening online. The more I blog about current events and trends within my industry, the more traffic I get from visitors looking for help on those topics. The same is true in any niche, so think about your market and what’s happening today. Pick a specific topic and write a couple blog posts that provide guidance for those looking for help.

If your nervous about blogging or have trouble getting started, I recommend that you just start writing without editing at first. You don’t want editing to get in the way of your stream of thought. Rather, get the ideas down on paper, and then go back later and edit for proper grammar and markup such as bold and italicizing. For example, I write this blog post using Siri – a voice to text dictation application on the iPhone. It took me just a few minutes to talk and the results was nearly 1000 words.

With every blog post that you write I also recommend you include categories and relevant tags. In WordPress, for example, you can choose these options when publishing each blog post. This creates additional pages within your site that Google can index and also provides helpful navigation for your users to discover content across your site.

When you finally publish your blog pos, share the link to your content on popular social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Google Plus. Soon, you’ll see traffic coming to your site that may otherwise have gone to the competition. Of course, use Google Analytics to see exactly how these people are finding your site and what keywords they used when they searched on search engines.

3) Comment on other Blogs

I’ve written about commenting on other blogs previously so I won’t get into too much detail here, but this remains a very powerful method for driving traffic to your website.

When you comment on other blogs or websites there are a few things that happen.

First, it forces you to really read the article, form your own opinion about the subject and then add value to the conversation.
The second thing that happens is that people that read that article will see your comment and your name. If you comment often, they will identify you as a thought leader within your niche. Furthermore, if you leave good comments, readers will click through to visit your website and learn more about you.
In some cases, search engines will also be indexing your comments – buildings backlinks that drive search engine optimization for your site over the long-run.

I hope you find these three strategies helpful. Obviously, as the search engines continues to evolve and new online platforms appear these strategies will change over time.

What is your favorite strategy for driving traffic to your website?

New Visitors Start Here

Steinar — Tue, 06 Dec 2011 05:11:47 +0000

Hello and welcome to the my blog. My name is Steinar Knutsen and I am a full-time Internet Marketing & Technology Consultant. I’ve been blogging since 2001 and use this blog as a platform to test new ideas and share with you what works.

If this is your first time to my blog, you will want to read this page carefully as it will help you to learn about Internet Marketing in a way that makes it much easier to comprehend – plus it will help you to understand which parts of my site to check out first so that your time is best put to use.

First a little background: For new people new to Internet Marketing, the reason our business can be extremely overwhelming is because of:

The broad range of strategies available to position your business online.
The sheer number of tactics needed to successfully execute a given online marketing strategy.
The overwhelming nature of managing multiple social media profiles and communities.
The complete lack of any comprehensive set of industry standards for training.

Who is my blog for?

This blog is for business owners and marketing managers faced with the task of creating an online presence for your company. Maybe you’ve read something in the news about the popularity of blogging and social media, but have found it frustrating to nail down specifically what to do next, how it all ties together and what works best.

My blog will show you specifically how to:

Research and find profitable keywords (this is by far the single largest cause of failure for most online marketers)
Build websites and landing pages the correct way
Get your site ranked in the Search Engines
Convert visitors, Generate Leads and Increase your Return on Investment

What you can expect from me:

I tell it like it is. I have nothing to hide and I have no problem sharing my best strategies and tactics. Online marketing is a fast paced industry so it’s my job to stay on top of the latest developments.
I’m always online so if you leave a comment or reach out to me on Twitter, you can be fairly confident that I’ll reply within minutes.
I like to try new things and share my experience along the way. I take the risk and you benefit.
I like to mix up my content with text, audio and video. I think you’ll find it more interesting and quite frankly I find it’s a lot more fun.

Here are Some “Must Read” Posts to Get You Started

How to Contact Me

Definitions and Terminology

Blog – Originally call a weblog, a blog is a form of website that allows you to update content on a regular basis, much like you would a daily diary. Most blog platforms, such as Blogger, WordPress and Posterous are free and provide a user friendly interface to update content online without any additional software to install or knowledge of HTML. Blogging is a great way to keep your site fresh, inform visitors of new information and signal to search engines that your site is current and relevant.

WordPress – This blogging platform has evolved into one of the most popular content management systems. WordPress.com is an online free version where anyone can setup a free account and start blogging within a few minutes. WordPress.org provides a version of WordPress that you can download and install on your own server. In both cases, WordPress offers a simple admin interface, a great collection of free themes and a robust set of plugins to add functionality to your new site. For a more custom site, you can also purchase flexible WordPress theme frameworks that take WordPress to a whole new level.

Content Management System – In the old days, a website consisted of static content in HTML. Today’s modern platform consists of PHP based, dynamically generated pages that speak to a database on content. A content management system, such as WordPress, connects the PHP, CSS and database together to present your website to visitors. It makes it easy for you to add new content and edit content over time, rather than messing with HTML pages. Moreover, a content management system provides the tools to better organize your content and run sophisticated code and queries to manipulate your content.

Niche Website – Just like your business operates within a specific target market, a niche website is designed to laser focus in on one specific topic and target a particular set of visitors. For example, a general website might be about “tires”, whereas a niche site is about “Italian race car tires”. Niche sites are useful as landing pages for paid advertising campaigns or in markets that have a large variety of products and services and it’s important to speak to a specific audience. The idea is that if you can speak more directly to your readers, your content has greater value and has potentially a better conversion rate.

Domain Name – This is your web address, such as www.steinarknutsen.com

Plugins – most content management systems and blogging platforms offer a series of plugins or widgets that add functionality to your blog. Typical plugins include a search form, recent posts, a list of posts and pages, a calendar and a open text box for you to add custom HTML or javascript. WordPress has 1,000′s of plugins, many of which you see on this very site in the sidebars and throughout the content. Without plugins, your blog would mostly consist of text and images with some basic navigation.

On-Page Optimization – This includes all the things you can do on your website to increase the likelihood that search engines will index your content and display your website in search engine results. This may include title tags, keyword tags, alt tags, description tags, header tags, content based keywords, internal links, page titles, keyword rich url’s and more.

Off-Page Optimization – This includes all the things you can do off your website to increase the likelihood that search engines will index your content and display your website in search engine results. This may include back links from other websites, submitting your sitemap to Google Webmaster Tools, sharing your RSS feed on other blog directories, submitting links to your content on link sharing sites like Reddit or StumbleUpon. This list goes on.

RSS – In layman’s terms, Really Simple Syndication is a standard format for sharing content online. Most blogs have an RSS feed built-in, e.g., http://www.steinarknutsen.com/feed. For publishers, RSS feeds help other online platforms and your readers, subscribe to your content using an RSS reader, such as Google Reader. RSS Feeds are important because they signal to these other platforms that you have published new content. If you have blog, your should submit your RSS feed to Google Webmaster Tools.

The Advantages of Using Google Plus for Business

Steinar — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 22:47:37 +0000

I really like Google Plus. It’s similar enough to Facebook and a little like Twitter but delivers a much cleaner layout and some terrific features that I’m finding very useful.

Listen or Download

Here are 3 Advantages of Using Plus for Business (vs. Facebook and Twitter)

Google Hangouts is a fantastic new way to conduct a video conference online for free. You can invite up to 10 people including yourself and keep the meeting going for hours without cost. Whomever is talking gets their video showcased in the conference call while other participants are shown in a row along the bottom of the screen. The system is very responsive and the audio video quality is fine.
Google Circles allows you to categorize people that follow you on Google Plus into groups called Circles. You could have Circles for friends, coworkers, customers, business partners, prospects, pundits, and so on. Once established, you can select which Circle(s) can see your individual posts. For example, you might want to share a new product feature with prospects and a customer service announcement with current customers.
Google Pages were announced in November and allow Google Plus users to set up a special Google Plus Page for their business. Since we are already seeing Google Plus content in Google search results, this is a great way to get your brand in front of general Google Search users. Functionally speaking Google Plus user Profiles and Pages are very similar. You cannot, however, put people in your Google Page Circles until they first connect with your business Page. I’m sure this will all change over time.

I encourage businesses to get on Google Plus now to secure their start date. Google usually uses domain age as a variable in Google Page Rank and it’s to your benefit to get in early.

What do you think about Google Plus? I love it – here’s a link to my Google Plus Profile.

How to Create a Different Sidebar for a Specific Blog Post with Catalyst WordPress Theme Template

Steinar — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 16:07:57 +0000

If you have a WordPress blog you have probably at some point wanted to create a different sidebar for a page, post or category. Unfortunately, most WordPress themes only allow you to create one set of sidebars and widgets that are consistent throughout your entire site.

The Catalyst WordPress Theme Template on the other hand let’s you create unlimited custom sidebars that can be applied to any number of posts, pages, categories and more. It’s really changes the way I think about my site and how I design WordPress layouts moving forward.

1. Install the Catalyst WordPress Theme

First, you need to start using the Catalyst WordPress Theme, which I’m using to power this blog and highly recommend. I’ve written a separate post on why I think Catalyst is the best WordPress Theme and top 5 reasons to use Catalyst.

2. Create a new Custom Layout

Once you’ve installed and acivated Catalyst, do the following step:

a. Go to Advanced Options in the theme settings
b. Select Custom Layouts section
c. Click add, to customize your new Custom Layout name and layout settings
d. Give you layout a meaningful name and layout that over time you can easily identify. For example, for this post I create a custom layout called catalyst_custom_sidebar_tutorial_post
e. Click Save Changes to save the new custom layout settings

3. Customize the widgets for your custom layout

a. Go to Widgets
b. You’ll notice that a new sidebar area has been created based on your custom layout. Again in my case the sidebar is named catalyst_custom_sidebar_tutorial_post
c. Drag widgets into your new sidebar as you would normally and click save within each widget as you go

4. Assign your Custom Theme to an individual blog post

a. Edit the post you want to assign the new sidebar to
b. Under the post select your custom layout from the Catalyst Layout selection box
c. Save your post and see the new layout and custom sidebar!

5. Catalyst also allows you to assign custom layouts to a number of other post types, including:

a. page layout
b. post layout
c. general archive page layout
d. category page layout
e. tag page layout
f. author page layout
g. search page layout
h. 404 page layout

To see these options go to Catalyst Theme Settings > Content > Site Layout Options. You can further customize individual category layouts in the general WordPress category settings. Pretty cool, huh?

There are some WordPress plugins to assign custom layouts and sidebars to your site, but they are not as fully integrated as what we see here with Catalyst.

What do you think? Do you like this feature? What are your though on Catalyst?

How to Find and Add Local Google Plus Users to your Circles and Grow your Social Network

Steinar — Mon, 28 Nov 2011 18:38:26 +0000

Searching for and adding local Google Plus users to your Circles can be a time consuming process, but I’ve come up with a solution to make it easier.

I’ll use my “Cville” circle for local Charlottesville Google Plus users as an example.

1. Share your local Google Plus Circle with your followers.

Go to Circles and click on the local Google Plus circle you want to share. Then click on “Share this Circle” in the upper right hand corner. Share it publicly or within a given circle of followers. Now everyone will be able to see your Circle and they may follow these people if they choose.

2. Publish a new Post on Google Plus asking your followers to share their local Circle.

Say something like this: “Please share your local Google Plus Circle with us. I would like to find new local people to follow and by sharing your Circle we can all get the most out of Google Plus on a local level. Go to Circle, click on the Circle you want to share and then click on ‘Share this Circle’”.

Hopefully, some people will now start to share their local Google Plus circles, like some of my friends, Jim Duncan, Daniel Rothamel, & Kari Rippetoe,

3. Add their Circle to your Circle or create a new one

When someone else shares their local Circle and you see it in a new Google Plus post, click on the “Add Circle” option in the middle of the image within their post. A popup will appear. If you want to create a new Circle from their Circle, spell out a unique name in the blank box and click “Create a new Circle”.

If you wan to add these people to an existing circle, spell out the same name of your exising Circle in the blank box and the option below will magically change to “Add to xyz Circle” (xyz meaning the name of the Google Circle you already have setup.)

Go through this process enough times and your Circles will grow pretty quickly.

Cool huh? Tell me how this goes.

Differentiate Yourself And Your Business For Online Market Leadership

Steinar — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:09:05 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about online market leadership lately and what businesses can do to differentiate themselves online. You see, it’s so crowded on Twitter and Facebook and blogs these days that it’s tough sometimes to stand out from the crowd.

How do I differentiate myself and my business?

Personally, it’s all about pushing the limits and adding real value on a regular basis for my clients and friends online. That means shooting video, podcasting, blogging and commenting on other popular blogs within my niche.

Commenting on other blogs is a great community building activity that has significantly decreased over the years. With the proliferation of Twitter and Facebook buttons, most people just share content rather than actually reading it and getting involved in the conversation. Their loss … my gain. You should do the same.

My challenge to you is to think about what you can do to differentiate your business from the pack. How can you add value? How can you stand apart as a trusted source?

I’d love to hear your ideas. Come up with something you can do this week, this month or next year. Your market is waiting for you to take charge.

Talk soon.

Free Worksheet: Define Your Target Market

Steinar — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 01:22:46 +0000

As a business owner or marketing manager, defining your target market is one of the first things we know we should do, but is often forgotten or remains stagnant over the years. The problem with this is that as your business grows and your customers change, you risk losing focus on those who need you most.

Once a year, usually in the Fall, I like to review my year-to-date performance and outline my strategy for the next year. Part of that process includes a look at my target market. It helps me gain clarity of who my audience is, whom I wish to reach and what my ideal customer looks like. It’s not easy and sometimes it can be a tough pill to swallow but it’s a critical step toward evolving your business.

I find it’s easier to start with customers’ needs first and then get into the demographics. It seems like if you start with demographics you fall into the trap that “everyone is my customer,” which we know is just not true. Starting with their needs will quickly weed out adjacent and other irrelevant segments that would most likely not be a very good fit for your business.

Here is a simple Target Market Worksheet to consider.

Download a PDF version of this Target Market Worksheet

What are my customers’ needs?
Who are my customers?
1. Age
2. Gender
3. Economic Level
4. Lifestyle
5. Buying Habits
Where are my customers located?
1. Where do they live?
2. Where do they shop?
Projected size of market?
How does my business meet their needs?
What is unique about my business?

Of course, you will want to customize this series of questions to meet your needs, including any industry specific criteria typically considered relevant to customer segmentation. That being said, don’t feel constrained to industry standard segmentation schemes. Ask your market what’s important to them and completely redefine your target market if needed. Get specific, find your niche and get excited about the idea of speaking to them in a more meaningful way.

What do you think? Is defining your target market a worthwhile exercise or just a waste of time?

Mind Map: Elements of a good blog post

Steinar — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 01:13:33 +0000

A little mind map brainstorming on my iPhone about elements of a good blog post. What would you change or add?

Social Media: You Can’t Be Everywhere, Nor Should You

Steinar — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 23:51:17 +0000

As marketers, many of us strive to “be everywhere” on the Internet. It seems like a reasonable goal given the capabilities of tools like TweetDeck, Ping.fm and others that allow us to continuously share information across multiple social media platforms at once.

Or maybe, you’re spending hours shooting video, blogging and podcasting because you almost feel obligated … only to find out your market is really getting trustworthy information from one of your competitors on some other industry-specific, niche social media site.

You can’t be everywhere, nor should you. Many entrepreneurs are excited about technology and they overextend themselves because they want to be part of the latest trend. The key is to only be where your customers, prospects and those who influence them engage.
via Brian Solis on Five Common Social Media Mistakes and How to Avoid Them | Blog | Daily Dose | Entrepreneur.com.

Personally, I do tend to be everywhere because I’m in the business of social media and online marketing. It’s my duty to have an in-depth understanding of an excessive number of platforms. It’s part of the value I bring to clients.

For most business owners and marketing managers, however, it may make more sense to focus on one or two networks.

I think the reason most entrepreneurs, and larger companies for that matter, fall into the trap of “be everywhere” is that they have yet to clearly define their niche target market. It’s almost easier to believe that “everyone is a potential customer” than focus on a specific segment.

Unfortunately, the process of marketing to everyone is actually more like marketing to no one. It’s very difficult to sell your product or service without specifically talking to a potential buyer’s wants and needs.

I recommend you get laser focussed on your niche and find the 1 or 2 of the most trusted social media platform for that audience. Then communicate directly to those people using words and information that let’s them know you’re speaking to them.

What do you think? Is being everywhere a reasonable strategy or does it make more sense to hand-pick online platforms for more effective, targeted communication?

7 Free Goal Setting Templates and Worksheets to Download

Steinar — Sat, 19 Nov 2011 21:18:33 +0000

If you’re looking for a great goal setting template or worksheet to download, you should find the following resources helpful. For me, goal setting is an important process to help clarify both short-term and long-term objectives. Without goals we can easily fall into reactionary mode, whereby we fail to evaluate opportunities relative to our overall desired course.

In my experience, writing down my goals often helps me achieve them faster and better than expected. It allows me to consistently focus on what’s most important for me and my business. This is not selfish – in fact, it’s better for your customers and those around you as well.

Here are some goal setting templates and worksheets you might find helpful:

1. Setting SMART Goals for your Marketing Strategy

Setting SMART goals is a proven approach to achieving success more quickly. As 2010 winds down, this is the perfect opportunity to examine your goals for 2011 and apply the SMART mnemonic or acronym to increase the likelihood your goals are met. Includes goal setting templates for Microsoft Excel and Apple Numbers.

2. Setting Goals that Others Will Pursue: Committing to an Outcome

By setting goals and measuring their achievement, you can focus on what is most important, waste less energy on noncritical tasks, and achieve greater results. Whether your organization takes a top-down approach to goal setting or a bottom-up one, you are responsible for setting goals for your unit and for yourself. This chapter breaks down the priorities, the obstacles, and the after-action review of goal setting and achieving.

3. Goal Setting Worksheet and Weekly Planner Template

This Goal Setting Worksheet will help you organize your goals, to dos, and/or projects to help you make the biggest impact in your life or career. This Weekly Planner Template (inspired from the teachings of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People) will help you organize the most important things to do in each “role” you play in your life. Combined with the Goal Setting Worksheet, you can easily identify those things that will have the biggest impact.

4. Goal Setting Worksheet and Template

There are many free goal setting worksheets and templates available on the web. Even though there are slight variations in individual worksheets, they all serve the same purpose. Get this goal setting worksheet kit and take a step towards a clear sense of direction in your life.

5.Goal Setting Forms

If Goal Setting Forms is what you’re looking for, you’ve come to the right spot. In all likely hood, you are one of the vast majority of people who never learned to either consciously or unconsciously set goals. Now you have come to understand that goal setting is central to success in any part of life and you want in on the action. Good news! We have provided some goal setting forms for you right here! How convenient! How useful.

6. Setting Goals

14 templates for how to set goals, goal worksheets, setting goals, goal lesson plans and more.

7. Free Goal Setting Templates

Studies have shown that people that write their goal along with a written action plan have a 51% chance to achieve it. Compared to those that do not write their goals, they have a 43% chance of achievement.

Bonus: Printable SMART Goal Setting Templates

SMART goal setting templates, such as those below, remind of you of what you want, why you want it and how to get it. Print and use this free template to accelerate your progress towards what you want and waste less time on the way.

Which template(s) did you find most helpful?

Top 5 Reasons to use the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework for your Blog

Steinar — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 00:06:30 +0000

I’ve been customizing WordPress themes and creating my own themes from scratch since 2006. Nonetheless, there are a number of great Wordrpess themes available from both WordPress and other 3rd party developers.

My favorite WordPress theme, however, is the Catalyst WordPress theme. I’ve used Thesis on a number of projects and really love it too, but Catalyst is really in a different league altogether.

Here are my top 5 reason to choose Catalyst:

1. The Catalyst WordPress theme is extremely customizable. Weather you want a simple, minimalistic theme for your blog or a very robust, complex theme, Catalyst can handle it. Out of the box, Catalyst comes loaded with over 800 customizable variables, including font choice, font colors, margins, padding, excerpt lengths, author settings, homepage boxes, and more. The beauty is that the settings go deep into very specific sections of your site for that professional customized look and feel.

2. The Catalyst WordPress theme allows you to create multiple, customized sidebars. Most theme only allow you to create one or two sets of sidebars for your blog and they’re usually in a fixed position throughout all pages and posts on the site. With Catalyst you can have completely different sidebar configurations and content for different sections of your site. You might want no sidebar on the homepage, a single sidebar on static pages and double sidebars on blog posts and pages. And maybe you want a unique sidebar for each category archive page. Catalyst offers the flexibility to handle this and let me tell you … it’s very cool!

3. The Catalyst WordPress theme has custom WordPress hooks integrated into the admin. Most WordPress users (and developers for that matter) do not fully understand the advanced functionality available with the use of WordPress hooks. Think of these as positions throughout the WordPress framework where you can insert code as needed. Most plugins use hooks to embed code in your blog. For example, you might want to add some social media icons after the title of every blog posts. Using Catalyst WordPress Hooks makes this process a breeze, since you can do it right within the Advanced settings control panel.

4. The Catalyst WordPress theme has an amazing front end CSS editor – something I’ve never seen anywhere else. This basically allows you to point and click to select areas of your content, add additional CSS formatting and save it to your custom CSS file. This is a real life saver if you have limited PHP and CSS programming experience. And for those of us that are proficient at CSS and PHP … all I can say is Wow!

5. The Catalyst WordPress theme has a knowledgable and supportive development community. Unlike other themes, the forums at Catalyst are lively and full of helpful content. The owner and primary developer, Eric Hamm, is often in the mix providing helpful advice and support on a daily basis. More experienced Catalyst users are often helping new folks and I find it’s relatively easy to find answers to any questions that come up throughout the learning process.

Obviously, I strongly believe in Catalyst … it’s like no other theme I’ve ever used before.

If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a line.

30DTC – Why are WordPress Tags Important?

Steinar — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 07:11:35 +0000

WordPress tags can sometimes be a real mystery, but they are very important.

User Navigation

1. WordPress tags help your readers navigate your content.

I like to compare them to the Index in the back of a book. These are all the specific, individual words that you as a reader are seeking, that may not be as obvious in the Table of Contents (categories).

If readers find one post interesting, they’re likely to find other posts that share a similar tag interesting as well.

Search Engine Traffic

2. WordPress tags can drive significant traffic to your website. When you use a tag in a post, WordPress creates an addition page. For example, this post has the tag “wordpress tags”, so WordPress automatically creates a page for … WordPress Tags.

Since the new page has your exact keywords in the URL, search engines have a better chance of understanding what that new page is about. Thus, they get indexed well and drive traffic when people search for that phrase on Google, etc.

Here’s a great example.

I recently wrote a blog post about Google Plus Pages and used the tag “google-plus-multiple-admins” because I knew that the lack of multiple administrator support was an issue and people would be searching for some clarification.

As you can see from the chart below, this drove a handful of new visitors to my site over the past few days.

Yes, there was traffic to that post from other channels, but the tags did contribute in their own, unique way.

I hope this helps. Do you use tags? Why or why not?

30DTC – Web Traffic Increased 15% in Week 1 of 30 Day Traffic Challenge

Steinar — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:56:49 +0000

I have a ways to go, but I’m happy with a modest 15% increase in web traffic to my site during the 1st week of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge.

What’s better is Time on Site doubled and my Bounce Rate went down ever so slightly. I’m focussed on Unique Visitors during the challenge and you can see my traffic went from 668 to 765 this week vs. last.

The most effective means of driving traffic have been:

writing more blog post across a variety of content that ultimately all ties together with internal links and references.
commenting on 3rd party blogs – I’m averaging 3 comments per day.
choosing keyword phrases from Webmaster Tools where I’m on the 2nd page of Google Search results. This is traffic that usually misses my site and goes elsewhere. I’m focussing on the long-tail phrases that have 1,000+ impressions today and I site on in the 10-40 spot in search engine results. I’m doing some cross-analysis with Market Samurai as well to further analyze competitive landscape.

Yesterday I setup Bing Webmaster Tools and I’m exciting to see what new information I can learn and apply to my strategy.

Talk soon!

Social Media Expands with Launch of Google Plus Pages for Business

Steinar — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 14:23:25 +0000

After much anticipation, Google Plus Pages launched this week. It’s another significant step for Google as they attempt to steal market share from leading social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter. To setup your Google Plus Page, visit http://plus.google.com/pages/create.

Here’s a quick quote from their official blog post announcing Google Plus Pages …

In life we connect with all kinds of people, places and things. There’s friends and family, of course, but there’s also the sports teams we root for, the coffee shops we’re loyal to, and the TV shows we can’t stop watching (to name a few).
So far Google+ has focused on connecting people with other people. But we want to make sure you can build relationships with all the things you care about—from local businesses to global brands—so today we’re rolling out Google+ Pages worldwide.
via Official Google Blog.

A couple thoughts on Google Plus Pages given my limited experience:

This is Google so we should take care to understand that content you share on Google Plus has a higher likelihood of showing up on Google search results. If you’ve searched on Google lately, maybe you’ve noticed just how much content is surfacing from Google Plus. This trend will only continue.
As of december 19th, Google+ Pages may now have up to 50 admins. The capability to rolling out across all Pages, so you may or may not see this functionality yet. To add an admin, login to Google+, switch to your Page login, then click on Managers under the little gear in the upper right hand corner.
As a Page, you cannot add people to your Circles. Individuals must add your business first and then you may reciprocate. This makes sense, since we don’t want to get bombarded by companies promoting their Page. Google Plus offers a nice set of recommendation to help you promote you Page instead. I’m sure this will all change, especially the likely capability of businesses to befriend each other, much like Facebook Pages.

What do you think? Does Google Plus Pages have legs?

Do you have a Google Plus Page? If so, please leave a link in the comments.

How to Add the WordPress “Press This” Bookmarklet Link to Your Browser Toolbar

Steinar — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 13:45:11 +0000

I’m blogging a lot more during the 30 Day Traffic Challenge and it reminded me of this great tool that is pretty well hidden in the WordPress Admin: WordPress Press This bookmarklet. This bookmarklet is a useful link you can add to your browser’s toolbar or bookmarks to increase your efficiency.

The idea behind the Press This bookmarklet is that as you browse the web, you might come across something you want to share in a new blog post. Rather than cutting and pasting the content and appropriate resource links, you can use Press This to simply highlight the text and click the Press This link. This will save you a bunch of time and make the process of sharing other people’s content much simpler.

The Press This bookmarklet can be found in the “Available Tools” section of your WordPress admin. This is simply called Tools in older versions of WordPress.

To begin, click and drag the Press This button to your browser’s toolbar. Obviously, you must have your browser’s options set to show a toolbar of links or bookmarks. This varies depending on your browser and operating system. If you’re having trouble clicking and dragging, you can also right-click or CTRL-click on a Mac to “add link to Bookmarks” or “save link to Favorites”.

Once you install Press This in you toolbar it’s time to start using it. For example, let’s say I want to quote a recent article I found on SEO and reference the author with a link back to the original article. Simply highlight the text in the article you want to quote and click the Press This link in you browser.

Now you get a popup window where you can edit your post and add your own color commentary. You can also save the post as a draft which is a great way to fill up your pipeline with new post ideas. One drawback of the Press This window is that you cannot schedule a post for later, but I can live with that.

Typically I like to add my comments at the beginning of my new post just before the quoted text and put the quote in blockquotes. This seems to give the best appearance and provide proper separation for the reader between my comments and the 3rd party content. Of course, this will depend on how your WordPress theme is formatted to display blockquotes.

Here’s an example of a Press This post on my site.

Pretty cool huh?

Why should I use WordPress as a content management system (CMS) for my blog?

Steinar — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:50:16 +0000

WordPress is a fantastic open-source content management system designed to help you setp and manage a blog easily and fast. Most folks that are either in the business of blogging or thinking about starting a new blog have heard about WordPress since given its popularity.

Let’s take a minute to list my top five reasons why you might consider using WordPress.

1. It’s free. This may seem obvious but there are a number of paid blogging platforms available to choose from and WordPress is still free and open-source . Because it is free there are certain consequences.

For example, there is no telephone customer support so if you have a problem or question you have to reach out to the user and developer community available on WordPress.org. Not to fear, however, the WordPress community is fantastic.

2. WordPress is fairly simple to use. The process of installing WordPress and writing & publishing blog posts is no more difficult than writing an email. Several new releases in recent years have improved the administrative functionality and WordPress continues to get more user-friendly.

3. WordPress is highly customizable. There are a number of both free and paid WordPress themes available which are customizable. Two such examples are Thesis WordPress Theme and the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework, both of which I highly recommend. Because WordPress is designed using PHP and CSS, the customization opportunities are unlimited.

If you’re uncomfortable or unfamiliar with how to manipulate the look and feel of your WordPress theme, I recommend you purchase a preformatted theme that meets 99% of your branding objectives.

4. WordPress provides a lot of functionality right out-of-the-box but there’s also a fantastic library of plugins that extend the capabilities of WordPress. The majority of these plug-ins are free and they can really add to your user experience.

For example, there are dozens of plugins to include social media sharing capabilities on your blog, something that would traditionally take some programming knowledge to implement.

5. WordPress is very search friendly and according to Google, WordPress takes care of 80-90% of the work required for effective search engine optimization. The remaining 10-20% of search engine optimization can be achieved with the implementation of 1 or 2 SEO plugins such All in One SEO and WordPress SEO by Yoast.

What are your thoughts on WordPress? Do you use it to power your blog or do you have another platform that you prefer?

Sent from my iPhone 4S …

30DTC – Driving Targeted Web Traffic with Long-Tail Keyword Research

Steinar — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:06:47 +0000

It’s day five of the 30 Day traffic challenge and a couple days ago I set out to optimize for the keyword phrase of targeted web traffic. I’m happy to report that some of the traffic to my website is indeed for this keyword search phrase.

This is not by accident. I used the phrase in a number of blog posts. I used it in some PDFs I uploaded to my website and to third-party websites and I used it been some comments that I left on some other blog posts.

I used it in a YouTube video and a couple quick podcast episodes at AudioBoo. At this point I hope you are thinking about some of the keyword phrases that you could be optimizing for on your website.

Search engine optimization is as much science as it is art. We don’t know the algorithms used by Google or Bing but simply guessing what the right keywords are is going to lead to failure and ultimately confuse the search engines.

On the flip side, if you use market research to understand the appropriate keywords you can drive targeted web traffic. I recommend Market Samurai as a great tool for understanding what the appropriate keywords are. In my case, I spend about 60 minutes to research some potentially promising keywords. I am by no means finished, but feel like I’m heading in the right direction.

What is your search engine optimization keyword research strategy?

Create a Website in Minutes with a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog

Steinar — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 02:30:47 +0000

You want to create a website? WordPress is one of the leading blogging platforms available. Most people interested in blogging stumble across WordPress.com at some point and maybe register their own free blog. The lack of control over WordPress themes may be frustrating and you want to create a website that reflects your brand.

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
http://wordpress.org/

Ultimately, if you’re serious about blogging you are ready to install WordPress on your own server and create a website that offers more flexibility and control. It’s time to launch a self-hosted blog from WordPress.org.

A few benefits of a self-hosted WordPress blog are:

WordPress itself is still free (though you’ll need to purchase a domain & hosting package to install WordPress)
Full access to & control over all the files that support WordPress
Full access to & control over the MySQL database that manages your WordPress content
Ability to add any theme & customize WordPress themes as needed
Ability to add & customize unlimited WordPress plugins

On the surface these reasons alone should be enough to convince you that self-hosted WordPress is the way to go over the long run. There are other more technical, privacy and security related reasons as well, but we’ll leave that for another day.

How to Install WordPress and Create a Website from your New Blog

Step 1: WordPress Blog Domain Registration

First thing you’ll need to do is register you domain name or URL. This is the web address where your new WordPress blog will live. I recommend Bluehost to register your domain. Specifically, because they offer great products, support and uptime. Furthermore, their Control Panel is very intuitive vs. other registrars and you’ll thank me later for this!

Step2: WordPress Hosting

A website host provides server space for you to store all your WordPress blog files.

This includes the php and css files that drive WordPress plus the MySQL database and other applications required to actually make WordPress operate.

Step 3: WordPress Self-Hosted Application Files

Step 4: WordPress Themes

WordPress themes give you a more custom look and feel to your blog. It could be something fancy or maybe you prefer something more minimalist. In any case there are 1,000 of themes to choose from – both free and premium.

My favorite theme right now for someone who has limited programming skills but wants a theme that is dynamic and easy to customize is the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework. It is, in my opinion, the best theme available for WordPress today.

Otherwise there are plenty of WordPress themes available to choose from for free directly within the WordPress Admin section in the Appearance > Themes tab.

So, that’s it really – this is initial requirements to create a website with WordPress. The process to install WordPress first time is a bit daunting but you’ll make it. If you get stuck or feel unsure call the folks at Bluehost and they’ll walk you through it.

Free Report – Build an Effective Online Distribution Strategy

Steinar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 20:22:14 +0000

So much of what we do online these days is managing the flow of information.

We have tons of content coming at us everyday from social media, blogs, news, video and other online sources with little chance to filter the content let alone really consume everything in a meaningful way. On the flip side, some of us are in the business of publishing content and we sometimes question and even struggle to understand the best methods of distribution and consumption for our readers.

The attached report is my 2 cents on the subject of using RSS feeds as an effective means for managing the flow. I recommend setting up a blog as your central distribution center and using Google Reader as your gathering place and filter.

Enjoy!

Build an Effective Online Distribution Strategy

30DTC – Using Mind Maps to Brainstorm Ideas and Map Out a Plan of Attack

Steinar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 16:13:33 +0000

It is day three of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge and today I am working on creating a mind map of all of the potential channels and opportunities to drive targeted web traffic to my website. I’m using a great tool on my iPad, iPhone and Mac called MindNode Pro, which is available at www.mindnode.com. Another great free mind mapping application I’ve used in the past is FreeMind.

Mind mapping is a great way to brainstorm ideas graphically rather than writing down your ideas in a list. In particular, they allow you to get ideas out onto the table in a free-form fashion and then re-order or categorize your ideas in a more meaningful way. With MindNode, I can export my map as an image, pdf or text based outline among other formats.

You can see from the initial mind map that I’ve created there are numerous ways to drive traffic to your website. I’ve categorized my mind map into strategies, tools, measurement, and search engine optimization, plus a special category around stuff beyond increasing traffic, such as conversion and monetization. This is by no means complete but it gives me a starting point with which to move forward implementing my traffic getting strategy.

Here’s the same mind map exported as an html file … pretty cool, huh?

Increase Web Traffic

Beyond Traffic

Long term strategy
Business objectives
Converting visitors
Monetization

Measuring Traffic

Google Analytics
Quantcast
Alexa
Compete

Strategies

On my site

Blogging

Keyword rich posts
Controversial content that challenges common belief
Covering current events
Top ten lists

Subscriptions

Blog feed subscriptions
Newsletters
Auto responder series

Creating a simple tool or widget as a downloadable

WordPress plugin
Ebook
Excel templates
Simple workbook with forms to complete

Multimedia formats

Podcasting
Images
Video

On other sites

Press Releases
Paid traffic

PPC
Advertising
Affiliate Marketing

Social media

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn

Participating in Forums
Commenting on blog posts

Offline promotion

Tools

Market Samurai
Blogging editorial calendar
Google Reader
Subscription Services

Aweber
Mailchimp
Constant Contact
IContact

Search engine optimization

Keyword research
On-page

Leveraging what I already see working with current visitors

Off-page

Inbound links

Once my mind map is fairly complete, I will prioritize the action items and fill out my blogging editorial calendar. It is much easier this way to stay on track and feel like I have a plan of attack moving forward.

Mind maps are also great for outlining a table of contents for an eBook, white paper, or any writing assignment in general.

Do you use mind maps? How? Why? What tools do you like?

30DTC – Tracking Website Visitors in Real Time and Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts

Steinar — Thu, 03 Nov 2011 04:10:29 +0000

As part of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge, I’ll be spending a lot of time in Google Analytics. It’s nice actually, because it is giving me the chance to update a bunch of settings, really dig into some of data and get some hands-on experience with the new tools.

Tonight I stumbled across Google Analytics Real Time Reporting, which turns out was recently launched. Here’s a snapshot of the activity on my site right now. Three visitors – stunning, I know.

I have used real time tracking tools before, namely Woopra. For me, it never really made sense to watch a small handful of people on my site in real-time. I do have at least one client, however, who has upwards of 200 people on her site at any given time and in that case it’s fun to watch the traffic pass through.

Speaking of Woopra, I just found this relatively recent article that outlines 8 Free Tools for Live Website Tracking. Check it out if this is something that you want to explore further.

Tracking website traffic with Google Analytics Intelligence Alerts

What probably makes most sense for the passive Analytics user is the Intelligence Alerts dashboard. It essentially provides you with a visually intuitive snapshot of the top 10 major changes in traffic behavior on your website.

For example, as you see in the screenshot below, my site saw a 98% increase in Pageviews and a 242% increase in Average Time on Site on Oct. 15th.

If I click on the details link to the right, I can see possible factors that influenced the shift and add annotations for future reference.

While these alerts are useful, I’ve found the Google Analytics Custom Email Alerts to be the best in terms of notifying me of any major traffic changes. If you click on the Settings Cog icon off to the right in your Analytics Dashboard you’ll find a place to setup custom alerts.

Here’s a screenshot from a new alert I just setup tonight to alert me when unique visitor traffic spikes by 25% vs. the previous day’s traffic.

Normally, I would recommend weekly or monthly based alerts, but given my short timeframe for the 30 Day Traffic Challenge, a daily window makes sense.

We’ll spend more time in Analytics later, since it is my main platform to measure traffic and define success this month. Any specific questions about Analytics you would like answered? My friend, Pierre DuBois, is an Analytics expert at Zimana and could likely help answer any questions we throw at him.

30DTC – Using Market Samurai to Identify Keyword Phrases and Drive Targeted Web Traffic

Steinar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 20:01:14 +0000

It’s still day two of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge and it’s time to use Market Samurai to do a little keyword research. The goal is to identify long tail keyword phrases and increase targeted web traffic to my site.

I used Market Samurai for about 30 minutes this afternoon to identify at least one promising keyword phrase: targeted web traffic. I’ll revisit Market Samurai again later to explore other keyword phrases but let’s take a look at the initial process of keyword analysis and selection.

In this screenshot you see my initial keyword search for the phrase “website traffic strategies”. I narrowed the initial related keyword phrase result set to exclude non-relevant word and longer phrases and then move forward with my analysis.

What I discovered, as shown in the next screenshot is that the phrase “website traffic strategies” has relatively low traffic. The results tell me that this phrase only gets 4 clicks per day for the website in the #1 position Google search result set. I’m looking for a keyword phrase that gets at least 80 clicks per day in the #1 position so this won’t do.

I notice, however, that “increase web traffic” gets 374 clicks per day and has a PBR (phrase-to-broad match) score of 24%. That means that 24% of the searches for that phrase are exactly “increase web traffic” and 374 clicks are made each day on Google in the first position for that phrase. That seems a bit more attractive, right?

Unfortunately, I see an SEOC score of 666,000 which means that over a half million other webpages are already competing for the same phrase. I could deal with that, but generally that’s not good. I want a phrase that has less than 100,000 competing pages . . . but I like the traffic number.

Given the good traffic statistics for “increase web traffic” I run a similar keyword research report . . . this time for “increase traffic”. I narrow my result to keywords that have at least 80 clicks per day, a PBR score of at least 15% and no more than 100,000 competing webpages.

Based on the screenshot below, I discover that “targeted web traffic” is a good candidate.

“Targeted web traffic” gets 112 clicks in the first position on Google, has a PBR score of 36% and only 64,100 completing webpages. This is a pretty good keyword phrase to target and I’ll go with this one for now.

How will I use keywords to drive targeted web traffic to my site?

I’ll use this new phrase in a number of ways to drive traffic to my site. Basically, I’m telling the search engines and, ultimately, my readers, what my content is about. No trickery here. Learning how to drive targeted web traffic is exactly what the 30 Day Traffic Challenge is all about. I don’t want random traffic – I want targeted traffic. You should want the same. Make sense?

I’ll use my new keywords throughout my blog in meta-tags, titles, descriptions, keywords, categories, post tags, image tags, anchor text and more.
Off-site, I’ll use these keywords to find relevant 3rd party blogs and content with which to comment and use as inspiration for my own blog posts.
Understanding my keywords will also allow me to speak more directly to my audience, since I more clearly understand what they want.

Again, understanding how keywords work and what people are searching for online is critical if you want to attract a target audience through natural search optimization.

Guessing or choosing keywords based on intuition can really waste everyone’s time and effort. Don’t do it.

That’s it for now. I know this was a bit more technical in nature, but I hope you learned a little. I know I did!

I’ll share some more Market Samurai goodness later with a deep dive into competition and outranking other websites for my keywords. This is gonna be fun, right?

30DTC – Commenting on Other Blogs to Drive Traffic to My Website

Steinar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 14:50:18 +0000

It’s day two of my 30 Day Traffic Challenge and today I am going to embark on one of my favorite tactics for driving traffic which is commenting on other blogs. Commenting on other blogs has several implications for driving traffic.First, commenting on other blog posts get you involved in the conversation. It allows people to see who you are and click through to your website if you leave a link.

Listen or Download

Second, if enabled, your link on someone else’s blog post can be indexed by Google. By default most blogs use a no-follow rule which means that your link will not be indexed; however, with the help of Market Samurai I can find blogs that have this option set up to allow search engines to index my link. This creates a backlink to my website, which is one of the leading variables to determine how my site ranks on search engine results.

Third, leaving comments on other peopl’s blog posts forces me to keep on top of the latest trends, strategies and tactics others are using within my niche. In my case, I’m going to comment on blog posts that have to do with driving traffic to your website. I not only get to learn about what others are doing, but I get to use this information as inspiration for some of my upcoming blog posts.

For me, commenting on at least three blog posts per day is a reasonable frequency and pace that I can maintain over the course of 30 days. There is a ton of information on the Internet about driving traffic to your website so I feel like there will be no shortage of blog posts to find and comment on. This may or may not be the case for you depending on your niche.

A best practice when commenting on other people’s blog posts is to add insightful information to the original blog post. There’s nothing worse than leaving a boring comment with a link to your website. This adds no value and can ultimately hurt your search engine optimization. It can also hurt your reputation.

On the other hand, leaving an insightful comment that adds value to the conversation will draw additional comments and can help build your reputation overtime. You may even find some new people to follow online and build mutually beneficial relationships.

That’s it for now. I have some comments to leave. Do you regularly leave comments on other blogs? Why or why not?

Sent from my iPhone 4S

Current Website Unique Visitors and 30 Day Traffic Challenge Goal

Steinar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 04:24:24 +0000

The intention of this post is to establish the unique visitor traffic baseline for my 30 Day Traffic Challenge. Since this is about traffic, I turned to Google Analytics to see if I could easily determine an appropriate timeframe with which to compare my future performance.

It would be easy to use a monthly average based on the prior 12 months or year-to-date traffic, but since my traffic has steadily increased over that time, I didn’t feel that would really provide an accurate read on the situation.

In the following chart you can see I was able to identify 3 plateaus since the beginning of the year. In the Jan-Feb timeframe my traffic sat around 1,600 unique visitors per month. In the March to Jun period traffic hovered around 2,000 and from July thru October, it has increased to approximately 2,900 unique visitors per month. Given the sizable differences, I think it makes most sense to establish the baseline on the last 4 month period.

Next I focussed on the exact period in question. Google Analytics tells me I had 11,700 unique visitors during the last 4 months from July 1 – October 31st. Divided by 4, this is equivalent to 2,925 unique visitors per month.

So . . . 2,925 unique visitors per month is my baseline and 8,875 unique visitors is my goal for November!

Kinda scary if you think about it. A much safer metric to target would have been pageviews, since it’s relatively easier to get more page views from exiting traffic than to drive more unique traffic in general. But, I think targeting unique visitors is worth the fight — I need some new eyes on my content!

Again, some quick math concludes this is about 293 visitors per day. Sweet! We can do this!

———————–

Now that we’ve got that covered, let talk about some things I need to do right away.

Ping.fm

First, I just revisited my kick-off post for the 30 Day Traffic Challenge and “pinged it” with Ping.fm. This is a great tool, because it allows you to send a link to a number of popular social media and other bookmarking sites at once. For example, my Ping.fm account is set up to notify 16 social media sites, including my Twitter account and Facebook Page. This is a huge timesaver and has great search engine optimization implications.

There’s some debate over the use of tools such as Ping.fm to send the same post to multiple sites at once. My argument is that everyone has their preference for where they consume content. Some of my readers are on Twitter and others are on Facebook. There is some overlap but by and large, they are separate. Even if some of my followers are connected with me on multiple platforms, chances are that they have chosen one platform to spend a majority of their time on and therefore are probably not going to see my post more than once.

In terms of SEO, it’s clear that social media content is playing an increasing role in how content surfaces on the front page of major search engines. In my experience, it seems like roughly 40% of the search results I get on Google these days are related to one of my social media account relationships. I only see this trend continuing and therefore think it’s important to feed these platforms with links back to my website. I’d love to hear your thoughts on that.

Meta Tag Keywords and Descriptions

Meta tag keywords and descriptions are still an important element of driving traffic to your site. Keywords in and of themselves are critical to any sep campaign. Long-tail keywords in particular are the keywords that users enter into search engines to find your content.

For most of us, long-tail keywords probably manifest themselves in the form of 1) our personal or brand name 2) a unique phrase we may use frequently throughout out website and blog posts and 3) a keyword phrase we’ve specifically researched and optimized our content around. All three are valid and can drive good traffic. Check your Google Analytics for more information.

One area I really need to work on is taking an extra minute to define my blog post meta tags and description. For the last 12 months or so I’ve just let my WordPress theme take care of this for me. Unfortunately, when I look at the source code of my pages, I’m not happy with the resulting meta tags, so I’m going to do this manually throughout the course of my challenge to really get a handle on this important detail.

Fortunately, the Thesis Theme I’m using for this blog has a great setup of post option boxes where I can set the meta tags.

I’ll explain this in more detail later, but I’m going to use a tool called Market Samurai to analyze my long-tail keyword choices and selection.

Any thoughts on meta tag keywords and descriptions?

30 Day Web Traffic Challenge

Steinar — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 00:24:36 +0000

Much like a competitive athlete, I enjoy a challenge. Unfortunately, I’m not much into working out these days and with Thanksgiving approaching this would would really be a bad time for me to start an exercise or diet pan.

Anyway, I thought it would be fun, instead, to see if I can do something with my blog — like triple my traffic in 30 days. I was thinking I might try to double my traffic, but that doesn’t seem like enough of a stretch. Driving 3x as many visitors, however, seems a bit more exciting.

The other reason I’m doing this is because I get 2-3 calls per week from people who want their website to show up on the front page of Google search results. It’s got me thinking that a lot of people are looking for similar help and it would be fun to challenge myself to do the same on my lower ranking keyword phrases. The goal is to have a great set of resources and case studies compiled by the end of this challenge to share with my clients.

To do this, we should to establish a few ground rules:

I’ll share traffic stats from Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools as needed. This may include #’s or a few screenshots and definitely plenty of discussion. I need to be completely transparent with you so that we both may learn along the way.
I don’t have a master plan. This challenge isn’t premeditated. I came up with the idea today as I was finally integrating my Google Adsense, Analytics and Webmaster Tools accounts. I discovered some interesting traffic patterns and wanted to dedicate some time to fully understand the complete picture.
I’ll explore both on-page and off-page SEO strategies, plus some social media and back linking tactics. There is no silver bullet and I want to explore all my options to drive traffic. I’ve already done much of the leg work, but it’s really been a couple years since I really took a deep dive into my SEO. So much has changed!
I’ll share as much as I can along the way with blog posts, video and some audio. I’ll use the category 30 day traffic challenge with all my content so you might want to subscribe to that feed now if you want to follow along.
I need your help and input so please feel free to leave comments on my blog, my YouTube channel, on Twitter and Facebook.
Everything I learn and share is free information. No strings attached. I’ll probably have a few ebooks along the way and those will yours to keep as well.
I may include links to products for which I receive commission, also referred to as affiliate products. I only do this with products I use, trust and would recommend to my closest friends.

That’s it for now. First step is to map out a plan of attach tonight with MindNode just to get my head around where to start. I also need to get my hands on my latest stats and establish my starting traffic base.

3 Reasons to Share Facebook Content on Twitter

Steinar — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 20:35:27 +0000

Sharing content across multiple social media platforms is a common practice to help get your message out and communicate with your audience where they are most likely to see your content. A good example is sharing Facebook content on Twitter. Most businesses have an account on both platforms and have considered either linking the two up or posting to both networks simultaneously.

Some argue that this practice may be considered spam or at least annoying for users to some degree. So why would you want to do it then?

If you do not have a blog, Facebook may in some cases serve as a platform to share information in more detail than Twitter. In this case, when you post new content to Facebook, you want to share that information on Twitter for others to read. You really don’t have much of a choice.
If you share a lot of pictures, Twitter really isn’t the best platform. Facebook on the other hand provides a great set of tools to upload pictures, organize them into albums and write meaningful descriptions. Once this is done it makes perfect sense to send out a notification on Twitter.
Facebook is really great for managing events and allowing people to RSVP. It’s also more conducive to sharing details prior to and pictures after the event. If you want to increase participation, it’s probably wise to promote the event registration link on Twitter to potentially increase your audience.

So there are 3 specific examples of when it would seem appropriate to share Facebook content on Twitter. Unfortunately, it seems the default it either share nothing or share everything.

One thing to consider –most mobile phones (even Smart Phones) have trouble with Facebook links that show up on Twitter. They usually send folks to facebook.com rather that open the Facebook mobile application. In some cases, your followers may never actually find your content. It’s extremely frustrating, so think about your end users and ask them what they think.

Do you share Facebook content on Twitter? Why?

My first post with Siri

Steinar — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 05:25:34 +0000

So last week about the iPhone 4S and it is really helping me in terms of my ability to streamline my social media process. For example I am writing this blog post by talking to my phone. I am e-mailing this blog post using Siri and the email capabilities built into the iPhone.

Sent from my iPhone 4S

How to Customize Your SEO Options in the Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 03:15:24 +0000

Catalyst is a wonderful WordPress Theme that allows you to customize your blog with over 800 built-in options. In my opinion, it’s the best WordPress Theme on the market today.

Customizing your blog’s search engine optimization options is pretty straightforward in the SEO section of the Catalyst Core Options.

Steps to Customize Your SEO Options in Catalyst:

The title tag is used by search engines and also displays in the banner across most the top when viewing your site in modern browsers. By default your should append the site name and description to the Title Tag. If you can include keywords in these two variables to increase likelihood of being found when people search on Google, etc. A drop down let’s you choose the order in which these display and you also have the option choose a unique tag separator. I would go with the default options if you’re not sure what to choose.
H1 tags are arguably one of the most important elements in terms of content being read by search engines. It’s like the title of a book – it defines the first thing people and search engines see when they index your site. Catalyst give you the option to wrap either the Title or Description in H1 tags. Using the tagline might be more effective if the tagline is keyword rich and includes a better description of what your site is about. If your title is strong and explains your content well, choose that instead. You also have the option to manually assign H1 tag placement.
By default, search engines will attempt to index all the pages on your site. If you are a prolific blogger or a heavy user of tags and categories, your main content can get buried by all the dynamically generated pages that tags and categories create. Generally speaking you should only have a handful of categories, so indexing these pages is fine. By selecting “NoIndex” you are signaling the search engines to avoid indexing certain sections of your site. By default, Cataylst sets Archive, Tag and Author pages to NoIndex. For most site owners this makes sense and should be left alone.
Nofollow Comment Author Links tells search engines not to index links that you, as the author, post in your comments. By and large links in your comments will be to third party content and should not be indexed.
As search engines index your site, they also take snapshot of individual pages and cache them for future use. You have the choice to NoArchive certain sections in Catalyst though I recommend you leave this set at the default which allows for caching.
Homepage SEO Options first give you the opportunity to indicate your site’s Homepage Meta Description. These descriptions used to play a major role in SEO, but play a somewhat less important rolls these days given the rise of importance in other on-page and off-page factors.
Nonetheless, it’s important to provide a description. One practical application is that the description you provide here is often what appears below your heading in search engine results. The the second line of text that people see when searching for your site. Make it catchy with a clear explanation of what your site is about and why someone should visit. Include keywords or long-tail keyword phrases if possible without keyword stuffing.
Homepage Meta Tags should contests of several long-tail keywords. These are phrases that someone might search to find your site. Personally, I like to use Market Samurai to help identify the most valuable keywords phrases. Picking the wrong keywords can be a waste of time, so choose wisely.
This section gives you same choices for selecting how search engine robots will index, follow and archive your homepage.This would tell Yahoo!, Live & Google that the page in question should be treated as though it were a copy of the URL www.seomoz.org/blog and that all of the link & content metrics the engines apply should technically flow back to that URL. For an in-depth article on this subject visit http://www.seroundtable.com/archives/021646.html.

If you’re not familiar with Catalyst, I highly recommend you check it out today!

Why Catalyst is Now My Favorite WordPress Theme Framework

Steinar — Mon, 24 Oct 2011 14:45:40 +0000

If you use WordPress, it’s time you learned about the Catalyst Theme. This, in my opinion, is the best WordPress framework on the market right now – and I’ve tested many of them, including Thesis. Unlike a standard theme, Catalyst is extremely flexible and provides easy-to-use tools and functionality to create a highly customized theme for your blog.

Most themes require programming knowledge to customize. Catalyst has over 800 built-in options that customize your site. You can add multiple boxes to your homepage with the click of a button, or create custom sidebars that change depending on certain content types. Say you want to put a nice curved border around your page and increase the white-space around the body of your text – no problem, Catalyst can handle it.

Here’s a screenshot of the Navigation setting in the main theme’s dashboard. Notice that you can turn breadcrumbs on and off, including the language and symbols used. You can do the same with post meta data. This level of customization is consistent with the other functions available throughout the theme.

In this screenshot, you can see just how many options there are to customize the content within your site. Change the font (including Google Fonts), set the colors, borders, background, images, etc. It’s just awesome how easy it is to create a very customized look in no time.

In the Catalyst Advanced Options, you can take WordPress to a new level with custom layouts, widgets and css. Say you want a certain layout for your portfolio page – something different that your main blog page or contact pages. Catalyst allows you to define various layouts and assign multiple widgets to these layouts. The possibilities are unlimited considering the number of different combinations you could create.

Personally, I’ll be using Catalyst a lot more these days. I’ve been using Thesis, but now Thesis seems a bit out of date.

What do you think of Catalyst? If you’ve tried it what are your thoughts?

Setting SMART Goals for your 2012 Internet Marketing Strategy

Steinar — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 05:37:51 +0000

Internet Marketing continues to serve as a powerful channel for communicating with your market. Social media, geo-location services and mobile devices extend the opportunity to reach your audience in a new and different way and add value to the discussion happening online.

Spending time now to develop your internet marketing strategy for next year will provide you with the appropriate baseline, timeline and milestones to ensure effective execution. Part of that process is establishing goals with which to measure your success.

Setting SMART goals is a proven approach to achieving success more quickly. As the year winds down, this is the perfect opportunity to examine your goals for 2011 and apply the SMART mnemonic or acronym to increase the likelihood your goals are met.

SMART stands for:

S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Attainable
R – Realistic
T – Timely

Free Template Downloads:

Specific

You want to clearly define your goals to articulate specifically what you are trying to achieve. The question is what, how and why are you striving toward this goal?

What are you going to do? Use action words, such as create, sell, manage, or grow, etc. to bring a sense of energy to your goals.
Why are you doing this? What is the ultimate outcome? Why is this important and what impact will this have on you, your business, or your customers?
How are you going to do this? What are the sub-goals or action steps that will enable you to achieve your goal

The more specific you are, the greater your ability to identify success when it occurs. For example, “I will write and publish 21 blog posts (250-400 words) about skydiving equipment by March 1, 2010.“ In this example I used action words “write and publish”, specified the number, length, and topic of the blog posts and put a date on it. As we’ll discuss next, this goal is also measurable, attainable, realistic and timely.

Measurable

If you cannot measure your goals then you cannot manage your progress. Furthermore, it is far more difficult to achieve your objectives if a) you do not measure your progress or b) you do not measure the appropriate metrics. In some cases a progress chart, table or simple checklist might help.

For example, you might be trying to improve visitor conversion rates. Using a web statistics tool, such as Google Analytics, can help track vital statistics but make sure you understand and pick the right metric that defines success. You can get 1,000 visitors a day, but if no one buys, that metric is meaningless. Don’t get caught up trying to move the wrong target.

Attainable

Is your goal possible? Is it limited by your resources or require more time to achieve? I encourage you to set stretch goals for yourself to push your limits, but keep them within reach. The benefit is that you’ll see real progress toward success. The risk is that you do not achieve your goals and lose momentum or hope.

For example, you may have just launched a new blog and you want 20% of your visitors to sign up for your newsletter out of the gate. While this is a realistic rate that you could eventually achieve, it is unlikely to happen right away. A more attainable goal would be to grow your newsletter list by 5% each month.

Realistic

Is your goal realistic? You might want 5,000 newsletter subscribers, which is attainable, but is it realistic to achieve this goal by within 2 weeks? Maybe not. Be honest with yourself and your business when setting goals by keeping them realistic or you risk disappointment.

Timely

When is the deadline to achieve your goal? Next week, 3 months, by year end? Setting a specific date will help you identify your tactical sub-goals and action steps to achieve your goal within a given deadline. Map out these deadlines or milestones on a calendar. Plan rewards for yourself when you cross each line.

A common mistake is to generalize about timing. For example, avoid using descriptions such as “this year, next quarter, in the next two weeks.” Without a specific date, these deadlines will slip away.

In my experience, SMART goals help you reach your objectives more quickly with a defined path for success. I recommend writing them down and revisiting them frequently to check progress and adapt to changing circumstances. In most cases, you will over-achieve — either beating a deadline or delivering something of greater value.

What’s your experience setting goals for the new year? Do you use the SMART mnemonic?

How to Remove Mobile Formatting from WordPress Twenty-Eleven Theme

Steinar — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:51:02 +0000

By default the Twenty-Eleven WordPress theme includes custom CSS support for mobile viewing. In some situations, you might want to remove this option, but it’s not clear from the Dashboard has to do this.

To remove the mobile formatting, edit your theme and comment out one line of code. This image illustrates how it’s done.

Keep in mind that your should create a child theme if you want these customizations to survive when you update the theme.

iPhone 4S and Siri Impact on Productivity

Steinar — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:17:10 +0000

Last week Apple launched their latest phone, the iPhone 4S. Included with this phone came some amazing software called Siri. I’m using Siri right now to write this blog.

The technology behind Siri is nothing new. The system is powered by a popular dictation software company called new Nuance.

Nuance produces great software for the desktop and mobile applications. Some popular titles include Dragon Dictate, MacSpeech, and Dragon Dictation for the iPhone. These programs have gained popularity over the years because of their accuracy and ease of use.

What is unique about Siri is that it is further integrated into the core functionality of the iPhone. So, for example, I can pull up my contacts using voice commands and even move calendar items around just by telling my phone what to do. Siri also has an intelligent connection to Google and the Wolfram Alpha search engine so that I can ask reference questions and do Google searches just by asking a question.

Siri is being positioned in the market as your personal assistant. I think the impact on business owners will be noticeable for those that use Siri on a regular basis. The beauty is that you can do quick Google searches and administrative tasks while on the run.

There should also be an impact on Google search results and the nature in which people find information online. If you are a website owner or manager you might want to review your web traffic analytics over the course of the next few months to understand Siri visitors.

What do you think? Will Siri make a difference?

Sent from my iPhone 4S

Search and Email Still Powerful Channels for Online Marketing

Steinar — Fri, 09 Sep 2011 12:28:43 +0000

Most of the hype over the past few years has been focussed on social media, and rightly so. In many cases, social media is a preferred communication channel over other forms on online marketing, but the fact remains that search and email are still among the most popular online activities and should still be considered valuable components of the marketing mix.

Search and email remain the two online activities that are nearly universal among adult internet users, as 92% of online adults use search engines to find information on the Web, and a similar number (92%) use email …
… Today, roughly six in ten online adults engage in each of these activities on a typical day; in 2002, 49% of online adults used email each day, while just 29% used a search engine daily.
via Search and Email Still the Most Popular Online Activities – Pew Research Center.

There are a several tactics to leverage search and email activity to drive eyeballs to your website. Here are a few ideas:

Implement a Search Engine Optimization strategy on your website. This doesn’t have to be rocket science, but understanding the basics of SEO and doing a little bit everyday can drive a significant spike in traffic.
Write content on your website that answers your potential customers’ most pressing questions. What are the top 7 questions people always ask you and what are the top7 questions they should be asking you. Write helpful blog posts that address those questions and you’ll attract a growing audience.
Use a newsletter subscription service such as Aweber so that readers can subscribe to your blog via email. The fact is, most folks don’t really understand how to subscribe to your RSS feed and email is just more convenient.
Leverage the direct messaging capabilities of social media sites to send email to your followers. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and YouTube all provide you with this functionality to communicate privately, 1:1 via email.

What do you think? Are search and email still powerful marketing tools?

Why it may be time to purge your Twitter account

Steinar — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 04:14:02 +0000

What is your following strategy on Twitter?

It’s kind of a funny question but if you’ve been on Twitter for any length of time this question has crossed your mind. Most people start out on Twitter by following friends or colleagues that they already know and soon they branch out to people within their geographic region.

The next logical step is to consider people within your niche. Maybe you’re a realtor? Or maybe you’re a doctor? Maybe you start to connect with people who share similar interests by identifying individuals based on their job description or certain characteristics within their Twitter bio.

Beyond that you might run across people that have tweeted interesting posts and therefore you follow them as well. Or maybe you follow someone based on a “Follow Friday” recommendation. And then there are random people that you run across on Twitter that you find interesting and you start to follow them too.

Lately I’ve taken a more aggressive approach to following people on Twitter. I’ve used the search functionality within Twitter to identify people that I might find interesting whether they are in my niche or in adjacent industries. I’ve even used some software to automate the process. Don’t hate me for that – it’s my job to test this stuff out.

At the end the day I was following nearly 1500 people. It has simply become overwhelming and has ultimately decreased the value in terms of my experience interacting with people on Twitter on a daily basis. I just couldn’t find the meaningful discussions through all the noise.

Maybe you’ve heard the common assumption that we really can’t follow more than 150 people and still maintain meaningful relationships on social media platforms. I think that is for the most part pretty true.

And so today I am embarking on a kind of purging of my Twitter account. I am unfollowing people by the masses. People that don’t interact with me or people that I find do not add much value to the conversation. It’s not that big of a deal – we’re only talking about roughly 1,350 people, not tens or hundreds of thousands of people.

I think that when this process is complete I’ll have a much more solid set of people that I follow that I find interesting, not only locally but also within my niche.

I think it’s good every now and then to analyze the people that you are talking with online and consider the quality of conversations you’re having on a daily basis.

If you find that your experience on Twitter and other social media platforms is waning, I encourage you to do the same.

Many before me have taken the same stance and discovered that the overall quality of their daily social media experience has improved. In fact, you’ll probably develop deeper relationships with the people you do follow and find a stronger voice within your market.

What are your thoughts?

BTW, I “wrote” this post using the Dragon Dictation iPhone App. I highly recommend it if you prefer to talk rather than type.

Social Networking Site Usage Among Adults on the Rise

Steinar — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 00:34:53 +0000

I often hear the excuse from reluctant business owners that “our customers don’t use social media.” I often come back with a series of statistics, such as the following that suggest otherwise.

Fully 65% of adult internet users now say they use a social networking site like MySpace, Facebook or LinkedIn, up from 61% one year ago. This marks the first time in Pew Internet surveys that 50% of all adults use social networking sites.
The frequency of social networking site usage among young adult internet users under age 30 was stable over the last year – 61% of online Americans in that age cohort now use social networking sites on a typical day, compared with 60% one year ago. However, among the Boomer-aged segment of internet users ages 50-64, social networking site usage on a typical day grew a significant 60% (from 20% to 32%).
via 65% of online adults use social networking sites | Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project.

First, I’ll admit it’s kinda funny that MySpace is listed here. Sure they have new ownership now but I don’t see them as a driving force. Nonetheless, they still have a few hundred million users, so it’s only fair to include MySpace in the mix.

Here are my thoughts on the numbers above:

65% is probably conservative. When I ask groups of people I often see numbers in the 75%-80% percent range. I think there’s a big population of people that don’t even realize their on a social media site when browsing the web. For example, it could be fairly simple to confuse a Ning niche site with a regular blog or standard forum for that matter … even if you’re visiting the site everyday.
Stability of social media usage among the younger audience is expected. This demographic was the first to arrive on the scene, has kicked the tires and is now settled in on their 1-2 favorite social media sites for a while. They’ll shift to different platforms overtime, but I don’t see them abandoning social media anytime soon.
60% usage growth within the 50-64 age group makes sense for several reasons. One, this group was late to the party, so they’re just now getting up to speed. Two, they’ve been convinced by their children and other relatives that there is value in connecting with family members on social media platforms. And three, they’ve actually been on social media platforms all along and they’re just now ready to admit it.

So, if you’re a business owner and still contemplating the value of social media to connect with your market, I urge you to consider this study and many others like it that illustrate the shift toward all this social.

What do you think? What can we learn from these trends and how does it impact marketing your business online?

How to Increase Your WordPress Site Speed

Steinar — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:23:15 +0000

We’ve heard for a while now that Google considers site speed as key factor in their search rankings. In other words, they look favorably upon sites that load faster and thus give them preferential treatment in search rankings when someone is searching on Google.

Site speed can also dramatically effect visitor experience. If your site is slow to load, visitors may be more likely to bounce or leave the site prematurely. You all know the feeling when you visit a site and it takes for ever for content to show up. You don’t want to be that site! You want your site to deliver content quickly, especially with the increased use of mobile web browsing.

There are several actions you can take to speed up your site. Let’s cover a few of the basics to get you started.

Measure your site’s speed

Google is nice enough to provide an entire set of tools to help speed up your site, including a handy Chrome speed monitoring extension for Developer Tools and an online Google Speed Test tool.

The report from this test explains potential issues effecting your site’s speed and categorizing them into high, medium and low priority. Obviously, it’s in your best interest to address the high priority issues first and work your way down the list. In my case, I had site caching disabled which raised a “high priority” flag.

I also ran a second site speed test at WebPageTest.org. The feedback from test results are similar in nature to those generated by Google’s online tool with one major advantage: WebPageTest let’s you compare site speed before and after improvements. My original test tracked my site’s Page Load Time at nearly 9.5 seconds, which is dreadful. After a few tweaks I managed to reduce page speed to 5.8 and eventually to 5.4 seconds. I’m not done yet!

WebPageTest.org also gives you a score on a scale of 0-100 and allows you to bookmark your results so that you can come back any time to run additional tests. Maybe you could compare your site to a competitor or another site that you think loads quickly?

Cache your WordPress site to increase page speed

I recommend you install a WordPress caching plugin, such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache. These services basically ”generate static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog, so that they load faster. After an html file is generated your webserver will serve that file instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress PHP scripts.”

There are a ton of settings within both of these plugins, but the good news is that they are pretty self-explanatory with plenty of documentation to help you set things up right.

Once activated, you’ll notice a difference in site speed right away. Note that because you’re now caching your site, when you make changes to your site, they may not appear when you refresh your browser. To overcome this, either turn off the caching while updating your site or clear your browser’s cache file. It’s no big deal, but it can be confusing the first time you experience this.

Minify and Optimize your CSS

If you have a complex WordPress theme and multiple plugins, your site will slow down unless you properly optimize your javascript and css. You can do this manually, Wp-Minify is a great plugin that handles it for you.

There are only a few setting for this plugin and the default settings should do just fine. If you run into any problems, you may choose to exclude certain JavaScript or CSS files.

You can see in this screenshot that my page speed decreased by another full second after activating WP-Minify! Sweet!

Optimize your WordPress Database

If you’ve had your site up for any length of time, it’s likely that your MySql database is cluttered with extra content that is negatively impacting your site’s speed. Fortunately, there’s a great WordPress plugin to help clean up the mess.

WP-Optimize is a WordPress 2.9++ database cleanup and optimization tool. It doesn’t require PhpMyAdmin to optimize your database tables. It allows you to remove post revisions, comments in the spam queue, un-approved comments within few clicks.
via WordPress › WP-Optimize « WordPress Plugins.

Was this helpful? Let me know if your site speed improves!

Companies Still Struggle with Social Media Return on Investment (ROI)

Steinar — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 02:37:25 +0000

It’s amazing to hear that with all the hype over the past couple years that a large number of companies have yet to measure social media return on investment.

Over half of executives in the food and drink industries do not measure the return on investment ROI they get from their use of social media, according to a just-food and just-drinks survey.
More than 54% of industry professionals said they did not monitor the ROI that their companies make on social media networks. A further 18% “did not know” if the business in which they worked measured the returns.
via Food and Beverage Industry Failing to Grasp Social Media Potential – PR Newswire – sacbee.com.

I understand that, like most marketing strategies, measuring results can be difficult. Much like many forms of advertising, it’s not always clear how customers come to finally do business with your company. Was it an ad they saw? Was it a combination of market touch points that built trust and credibility over time. Was there a specific tipping point from a particular campaign that drove the sale?

At the bare minimum, it’s critical that companies outline the metrics that define success when measuring social media ROI. Return may include awareness, familiarity, sales, leads, referrals, customer satisfaction and more. At the end of the day, investment boils down to time and money.

What metrics are important for your business? How can social media help move the needle? Start with the end in mind and craft a social media strategy to help drive results toward these goals. Don’t overcomplicate things by feeling obligated to track every single source of customer acquisition. Analyze a significantly significant sample and draw intelligent conclusions.

Test a variety of social media tactics and track results closely to create a winning plan over time. Measure these results against one another and against traditional forms of marketing. Maybe social media isn’t worth the investment. Maybe the lifetime value of customers is higher through direct mail or cold calling. If you don’t measure, you’ll never know.

Social media is not a fad, so please don’t use that as an excuse not to measure. Dedicate some time to map out your goals, identify your target market, identify the right tools to use and a process that minimizes strain on the organization.

One final thought – don’t expect immediate results. Social media takes time. You can definitely experience short-term, incremental success, but it’s important to consider the big picture and set expectations accordingly.

Any questions? Good luck!

Google Plus Text Formatting with Bold/Italic/Strikethrough

Steinar — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 21:10:42 +0000

Those of you using Google+ might see some folks posting updates that include text formatting. How does that work? Well, Google Plus has a hidden feature that lets you markup text with bold, italic and strikethrough.

You can see it in action in one of my recent Google+ posts.

Here’s how it works …

Bold Text in Google Plus: If you want to write bold text then you would start your text with star ‘*’and end with’*’ for example *Bold Text* will appear Bold Text.
Italic Text in Google Plus: If you want to write Italic text then you would start your text with underscore ‘_’ and end with ‘_’ for example _Italic Text_ will appear as Italic.
Strikethrough Text in Google Plus: If you want to write Strikethrough text then you would start your text with minus sign ‘-’ and end with ‘-’ for example -Strikethrough Text- will appear as Strikethrough Text.
Bold with Italic Text in Google Plus: In this case you would be start your text with star together with underscore ‘*_’ and end with ‘_*’ for example *_Bold with Italic Text_* will appear as Bold with Italic Text.
via Bold/Italic/Strikethrogh Text in Google Plus | Google+ Text Formatting.

Setup an RSS Feed for Your Google Plus Account

Steinar — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 14:59:43 +0000

If you’re like me, you like to use RSS feeds to aggregate and distribute content. Strangely enough, Google Plus does offer an RSS feed by default.

There is a simple solution from PlusFeed that takes less than a minute to setup.

First, visit your Google Plus profile and copy your account ID from your browser’s address bar.

Next, visit http://plusfeed.appspot.com/ and add your Google Plus ID to the end of the URL. This will generate your Google Plus RSS feed. From there, you can add your feed to Google Reader, connect it to FriendFeed, or a plethora of other options to track and distribute your content.

Enjoy!

How I use Google Analytics as Inspiration for Future Blog Posts

Steinar — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 06:08:35 +0000

I pay pretty close attention to my Google Analytics stats, because it’s a great way to find out what people are looking for and why they visit my site. HINT: It doesn’t show you any data from the people that did not visit your site, but you can use Google Webmaster Tools to do that.

More importantly, smart queries I run on keyword search data serves as great inspiration for future blog posts. To illustrate this point, I thought it would be fun to share a list of the search queries on my site from July that begin with “how.” This is a solid indicator of what questions people have and how I may be able to help them.

If you have Google Analytics and would like to run this same report on your site …

Go to Analytics>Traffic Sources >All Traffic.
Select Keywords as the Secondary Dimension
Enter “how” as the search term
Click Advanced and select “begins with”

Of course, you can change any of the variables to run a different report depending on your needs.

July search queries that begin with “How”

how to start a podcast
how important are tags in wordpress
how to attract customers
how does youtube search engine work
how to create a podcast on ipad
how to get facebook show my site picture when i post a link
how to make a podcast on ipad
how to publish podcast using ipad
how youtube seo works
how can ipad help my business
how i use my ipad
how to improve business facebook page
how to record podcast on ipad
how to share images from your website to facebook
how to share photos on page
how to start a pod cast
how to swipe back in web browser mac lion
how to swipe between desktops in lion
how youtube search works
how are consumers using foursquare
how businesses can leverage fourquare
how can a ipad help my business
how can an ipad help my business
how can companies engage with customers on twitter
how can i podcast with garage band for ipad
how can i scan a qr code into my phone?
how can i scan qr code on my phone
how can ipads help my business
how can the i pad help my business
how can the ipad be used to help business
how come i can no longer use the 3 finger swipe for back and forward in my browser on os x lion?
how do i create podcast on ipad
how do i create podcasts with an ipad
“how do i engage “”user agent”" in safari”
how do i get my garage band audio published as a podcast
how do i get my podcast in iweb to work
how do i make a podcast on ipad
how do i record podcast on ipad
how do i scan a qr code into my phone
how do i share a wall photo in facebook?
how do i use a mouse icon on the i pad?
how do i use the cursor in ipad safari
how do you engage with your customers?*
how do you get a different cursor for ipad
how do you get images to show up when you post links on facebook
how do you get picture show up in facebook link
how do you get your website logo to show up on facebook when you post its link
how do you make podcast on ipad
how do you scan a qr code into your phone
how do you swipe between desktops on osx lion
how do you swipe between desktops os x lion
how does facebook and twitter improve a business
how does fooursquare work for retailers
how fast is social networking growing
how i can share link from youtube on facebook via ipad
how important are post tags?
how important are tags in wordpress websites
how important is it to use post tags
how important tag post
how insert paypal buy now button in wordpress
how ipad help business
how much does it cost to distribute a podcast through itunes?
how much does it cost to start a podcast
how much does starting a podcast start
how to 520 grid
how to add author title to podcast in iweb
how to attract bussiness to your storefront
how to attract clients to your location
how to attract customers in opening day
how to attract customers to storefront
how to attract customers to your coffee store
how to attract customers to your store?
how to attract first time customer mobile phones
how to attract your online customers
how to build a distribution strategy
how to build samson mic
how to connect facebook video
how to create a fbml layout
how to create and publish a podcast on itunes from your ipad
how to create ipad podcast
how to create podcast for ipad
how to create podcast ipad
how to define social media objectives
how to define your social media objectives
how to do a blog mini series
how to do a podcast on an ipad
how to do podcast from ipad
how to drive customer engagement
how to embed a video from hulu on wordpress
how to embed audioboo into wordpress post
how to enhance my business facebook page
how to finger swipe browser on mac
how to fix facebook linter tool errors
how to get a description of your link to show up on facebook
how to get a picture to show up in facebook link
how to get a picture to show when you post a link on facebook
how to get better customers with social media
how to get cool back/forward in osx lion
how to get facebook show the picture when you link
how to get facebook wall updates from all friends
how to get website picture in facebook link
how to have picture show up facebook link
how to i improve my business page for facebook
how to improve facebook business page
how to improve facebook business pages
how to improve your company’s facebook page tutorial
how to link a blog for affiliate marketing
how to linter old post
how to log in to facebook as a page
how to log in to facebook pages
how to login as page facebook
how to lure customers by redeem marketing strategies
how to make a podcast for ipad
how to make a podcast from a ipad
how to make a podcast ipad
how to make a podcast mac garageband skype
how to make a podcast with skype on mac
how to make custom facebook layouts
how to make iphone to be a mouse on ipad
how to make podcast on ipad
how to make podcat on ipad
how to make the existing content works
how to mini-websites in facebook page
how to navigate in browsers with lion
how to navigate swipe os x lion
how to ping facebook for rss update
how to podcast a video from my ipad
how to podcast from ipad
how to podcast from your ipad
how to podcast garageband ipad
how to podcast on ipad
how to podcast with garageband ipad
how to podcast with your ipad
how to post audio
how to post in wall photos page
how to post update on facebook page
how to post updates on facebook
how to post updates on facebook page
how to post where you’re at on facebook
how to properly tag your images
how to publish a garageband podcast
how to publish a podcast on itunes ipad
how to publish a video from ipad
how to publish mp3 audio on twitter
how to pubslish podcast in iweb
how to record a podcast on ipad
how to record a podcast using the ipad
how to record a video podcast on ipad
how to record podcast from ipad
how to record podcast ipad
how to record sound and video on an ipad
how to record video blog on ipad
how to right click in osx lion browser
how to scan into my iphone
how to setup a new store front to attract people
how to share facebook wall to
how to share images in facebook from other site
how to share link on facebook with ipad
how to share photo from other website to facebook
how to share photos on a facebook page
how to share photos on another facebook page
how to share photos on facebook pages
how to share pictures on wall
how to share pictures on your wall
how to share tagged photos of you on facebook on your wall
how to share wall photo on facebook
how to start a podcast equipment
how to start a podcast on itunes
how to swip in browser in lion
how to swipe back in os x lion browser
how to swipe back lion browser
how to swipe back web navigation osx lion
how to swipe between desktops on lion
how to swipe to navigate on lion
how to uplaod a single picture to your wall on facebook
how to use 520grid
how to use ipad daily
how to use login facebook
how to use press this on wordpress
how to videocast ipad
how to wall photos on facebook
how web 2.0 works in seo
how will an ipad help productivity
how would a ipad help my business
how youtube search engine works
howto 520grid Facebook

How could this type of data from your website help you write better blog posts?

3 Tools to Record, Publish and Share Screen Capture Video

Steinar — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 02:28:46 +0000

I’ve often said that it’s good for bloggers to mix up their content with a variety of different forms of media. Rather than just text, you might spice things up with images, video, or audio. The benefit for your reader is that they’re not always seeing the same form of media and therefore your site is more interesting and more appealing to a broader range of readers.

Video can sometimes be a bit intimidating if you’re not comfortable putting your face on the camera. Video recording yourself is not always appropriate as well if you’re trying to demonstrate a product or show someone how to do something online. In those cases, it can sometimes make more sense to do a screen capture video. Here I’m going to discuss three alternative ways to record a screen capture video so that you can share something with your readers.

3 Tools for Screen Capture Video

1. Screenr.com

The first option is to use a great free online video capture service called screenr. You can visit the website screenr.com and joinby using your Twitter ID as your login username and password. From their screenr gives you the option to record a new video.

By simply clicking on the record now button you will be presented with a resizable window that you can basically position to fit the area of your computer screen that you want to record. You can either record something that you see on your browser or something that you see within an application such as PowerPoint or Keynote that you want to record.

Then you simply press the record button and start recording. You have 5 min. to record your video and you can just use the built-in microphone with your laptop or your computer to do the audio. Screenr records all of your mouse movements and does not require any editing. In fact there is no editing capability within screenr .

The benefit of using Screenr is that you can record videos very quickly on the fly and save them to YouTube. You can also download your videos for further editing if you choose and then republish them on any platform that you wish. I like to use screenr on occasion in those situations where I just need to record something quickly and get it out there without doing any editing.

2. Screenflow for Mac

A second option that I use quite frequently is Screenflow for Mac. Screenflow is a $99 product that gives you full control over the screen capture and audio recording requirements for recording anything that you see on your desktop. The beauty of Screenflow is the post recording editing capabilities.

In my opinion Screenflow provides the best end-user experience in terms of the way screen capture is presented because it allows you to zoom in on the mouse and record any keystrokes that you perform while recording the video. You can also add text titles and other zoom in zoom out effects to give it a very professional look and feel.

You can also add additional videos on top of one another so that you can combine multiple videos into one final product and create the best possible screen capture to get across your point. Screenflow is highly recommended by professionals and you see it quite often on some of the best tutorial websites across the web.

3. Quicktime

The third option for those of you that have a Mac is QuickTime. The latest version of QuickTime that comes with Lion OS X allows you to record video from your screen or any application on your computer and again allows you to determine the width and height of the recording capture size.

Quicktime is really a great solution if you just need a basic screen capture video. There is no built-in editing capability but if you’d like to export your video to iMovie the sky is the limit. The latest version of Quicktime also provide you with the ability to export to YouTube and Facebook among many other options. This is great if you want to use social media as a platform to distribute your videos online.

As I mentioned earlier screen capture is a great way to put video on your blog or on your website without actually shooting video of you talking or some other subject using a video camera. It’s a great way to illustrate a point or post a tutorial on your website and teach other people how to do something.

I’ve gotten tremendous traffic to my website with screen capture videos and I highly recommend them to any blogger looking to add a little variety to their blog.

Do you ever recorder and publish screen capture video on your website? What tools do you use?

A few cool finger swipe features in OSX Lion

Steinar — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 06:01:34 +0000

Apple released OSX Lion for the Mac this week. Here are a few of the cool new finger swipe features that should help improve user experience and efficiency.

OSX Lion iCal Navigation with 2-Finger Swipe

OSX Lion introduced a new version of iCal which allows you to navigate through days, weeks, months and years by simply using a 2-finger swipe to the left and right. This was particularly interesting to me since I was hoping we could get this feature on the iPad. It may be a sign of good things to come!

Browser swipe navigation with OSX Lion for the Mac

With OSX Lion you can navigate through your browser history simply by swiping two fingers left and right. No longer necessary to click the forward and back buttons. Very cool!

Switching desktops and apps with OSX Lion Mission Control

OSX Lion for Apple allows you to easily swipe between desktops and apps with a 3- finger swipe.

Top 5 Facebook User Activities on an Average Day

Steinar — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 19:19:59 +0000

A recent white paper from the Pew Research Center illustrates that Users Liking another users’s content is the most common behavior on Facebook. Here’s a detailed breakdown . . .

On Facebook on an average day:

15% of Facebook users update their own status.
22% comment on another’s post or status.
20% comment on another user’s photos.
26% “Like” another user’s content.
10% send another user a private message

This is pretty important data if you’re in the Facebook marketing game.

For starters, you might conclude that Facebook users generally prefer to be on the recieving end. Liking is a single click activity and it’s the most common behavior. Next time your boss asks why so few people comment on your Facebook Page, show him this data.

The second takeway is common sense really . . .

those who post content on Facebook stand out
those who post the best content get more Likes
those who post more of the best content, get the most Likes

What’s your Facebook marketing strategy? Is your Facebook Page getting the attention it deserves? What can you change to leverage this user behavior data and differentiate your business?

Are women more likely to Like you on Facebook?

Steinar — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:49:04 +0000

A recent white paper from the Pew Research Center suggests that women Like Facebook content more often than men.

The dichotomy between the two groups is clear …

Though I have my theories, I’m not a human behavior specialist nor will I attempt to explain why this is the case. As a marketer, however, I will embrace this data and use it to better leverage Facebook as a marketing tool. No sense spinning your wheels, right?

If you are marketing on Facebook you should think about a few things based on this data:

20% of women “like” content on Facebook several times a day compare to only 9% of men. Think about that. The more relevant your content is to women, the greater chance you have to get Likes for this group.
In general, the more content you put out, the more opportunities there are for people to Like. Of course, there are limits . . . what are those limits? Depends on your market really. Some folks can only handle one post per day, while others expect ten. Play around with this a bit and push the limits. See what works – you might be surprised.
In some cases, getting men to Like your content on Facebook may be a serious challenge, since 28% of men indicate they never click the Like button. Could a better strategy include targeting women to indirectly get your message across to men? This will obviously depend greatly on your market and how different forms of influence determine decision making among your users.

What do you think? Is this data relevant to your Facebook marketing strategy? Will you do something different as a result?

Age distribution by social networking site platform

Steinar — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 17:13:05 +0000

A recent white paper from the Pew Research Center illustrates the subtle differences in age distribution by social networking site platform, including MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other.

Here are a few takeaways:

Not terribly surprised that MySpace is mostly comprised of younger users, given the timing of MySpace’s popularity prior to the broader explosion of social media.
I think most businesses that are considering marketing on Facebook would be surprised to see that 25% of users are 50+ and 18-22 only make up 16% of the userbase
LinkedIn numbers seem right, given that the target market is mostly made up of middle aged working folks.
50+ crowd only accounts for 17% of users on Twitter. As the youngest social media site in this group, I imagine we’ll see rapid growth for this age group in the next 12 months.

What does this data mean? Well it means something different, depending on who you are and why you’re using social media.

As an individual user looking to connect with other people, hopefully this will help you figure out where people in the same age range hang out online. If you’re using social media for business as part of your marketing mix, this data should provide some valuable insight as well to help position your brand and marketing message.

What do you think? Is this data helpful? What other demographic variables are important to consider?

Steinar Knutsen

How to Make Money Online with the ShareASale Affiliate Marketing Program

How to Make Money Online with the Linkshare Affiliate Marketing Program

How the Amazon Associates Affiliate Marketing Program Works

Podcasting on my iPad with the Samson CO1U USB Condenser Microphone and Camera Connection Kit

How the Google Adsense Affiliate Marketing Program Works

Introduction to the Most Popular Affiliate Programs

Keyword Research for Affiliate Marketing

Brainstorming a Niche Market for Affiliate Marketing

How Do I Get Started with Affiliate Marketing?

Can I Really Make Money Online?

What is Affiliate Marketing?

3 Reasons Blogging Makes Good Business Sense

8 Step Social Media Blueprint

1. Commitment

2. Purpose

3. People

4. Content

5. Personality

6. Tools

7. Process

8. Measurement

Affiliate Marketing Field Guide by Steinar M. Knutsen (Free iPad Download from iTunes)

About Affiliate Marketing Field Guide

Video Playlist: Apple iPad & iPhone Screencasts Demo & Tutorials

Can I Really Make Money Online with Affiliate Marketing?

Demo of Apple iPhoto for iPad using Photo Stream and Tiltshift

Why I like iPhoto for iPad

New iPad Screencast Video – Flipboard for iPad

New iPad Screencast: Muting Twitter Clients with TweetBot for iPad

11 Free Business, Marketing and Sales Goal Setting Templates and Worksheets

Q&A: Why I follow brands on Social Media platforms

Q: In Social Media, do you only follow brands you use?

How to manage social media with a simple schedule of activities

How to properly use Facebook as a business and network with other businesses

How I use bitly to create links and track performance

How I use Google Analytics on a Daily Basis

How to Build a Website to Host Your Podcast

Step 1: Register your Domain and Signup for Hosting

Step 2: Install WordPress

Step 3: Get a WordPress Theme

Step 4: Install a Podcasting Plugin

Top 4 content publishing options for marketing your business online

Writing and Blogging

Images and Pictures

Video

Audio and Podcasting

Why podcasting is such a valuable marketing channel

How to Podcast with Garageband and Publish on iTunes

Please Don’t Complain to Me About Facebook’s Data Use Policy

First Impressions of Apple iBooks Author

GoToWebinar: #12 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Grasshopper: #11 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

2011 YouTube Video Traffic Review

My video stats from 2011

YouTube Activity Impact on Website Traffic

Key Takeaways for 2012

My New Video Introduction for New Site Media

OptimizePress: #10 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

LinkedIn is Top Social Media Channel for B2B Marketers

DropBox: #9 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Commenting on Blogs for Knowledge, Brand Building and Market Leadership

MindNode: #8 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Skitch Image Capture: #7 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Catalyst Theme for WordPress: #6 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

WishList Member: #5 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Hootsuite: #4 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Bluehost: #3 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Aweber: #2 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

Market Samurai: #1 Essential Online Marketing Tool for 2012

12 Essential Online Marketing Tools for 2012

How to add a Search Form in Navigation Bar for Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Adjust header tagline width in Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

How to add Google Webmaster Tools to Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

How to add sidebar content Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

Review of SEO options for Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

How to install Catalyst WordPress Theme Framework

How to get started with affiliate marketing for passive income

Basic Steps to Get Started with an Affiliate Marketing Site

3 SEO Strategies You Can Execute Right Now