Steinar Knutsen » effective internet marketing

How Can Social Media Benefit You as a Business Owner?

Steinar — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:40:04 +0000

A recent Nielsen survey showed that globally people spent an average of more than five and a half hours per month on social networking sites in December 2010, an 82% increase year-over-year.

For business owners, Social Media is important for several reasons. One, social media enables companies to connect with their target market, either locally or abroad. With over 500 million Facebook users and 100 million Twitter users, the potential to find and engage customers is like no other traditional marketing channel.

Two, social media is a great way to learn about your market, either directly from your customers, your competition or adjacent market businesses that serve your customer base. The ability to search and engage your market in conversation is a powerful means of market research.

Third, social media is a powerful channel in which to share information and market your business online. Have a new product to launch or a promotion to share with your customers and prospects? Social media is a great way to effectively communicate your marketing programs to a large, targeted audience.

Finally, search engines continue to incorporate social media data into their search and rankings algorithms. It is expected that social media will play an increasingly important role in how Google and other search engines determine a website’s relevance. Actively engaging in social media is considered good practice to leverage these changes and gain better visibility on search engines.

What do you think? What else makes social media beneficial to business owners?

Seven Elements of an Effective Blog to Drive Traffic, Engage Customers and Stay Organized (Video)

Steinar — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 17:42:55 +0000

Blogging is a great channel to deliver content online, deliver your message and engage in meaningful discussions with your target market. One of the challenges for bloggers is their ability to make their blog more effective and efficient.

In this video I discuss my recommendations on seven elements to drive effective blogging. There are more elements than just seven, but it’s the most I could fit into a ten minute video. For a great library of resources on this topic I encourage you to read http://www.problogger.com and http://www.copyblogger.com.

Topics Covered:

Unique & engaging content
Personality & balance
Consistent activity
Design with purpose
Focus & organization
Contact information
Comments & interaction

What’s been most effective for your blog? Which key elements am I missing?

Building an Effective Internet Marketing and Communications Map (part 1)

Steinar — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:10:58 +0000

I have done a ton of work over the years to understand and build an effective Internet marketing and communications network. The trick is to leverage rss feeds across multiple platforms to reach your audience where they hang out.

For example, some of my readers find me through Twitter and Facebook, while others search Google for a particular keyword phrase and stumble upon my bookmarks on Digg or Delicious. They may never visit my website but by linking my various accounts correctly they’re bound to find me somehow and interact on their platform of choice.

Many of the tools and options to link these accounts have changed so it’s time to update my settings and re-evaluate my process for communicating online. Here is a snapshot of my initial thoughts. In part 2, I’ll take a deeper look at the direction information flows and the best setup to optimize my reach and time.

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