New Site Media Group » Marketing

Keeping Momentum in Social Media

Steinar — Sat, 26 Nov 2011 20:58:09 +0000

Here’s a good article from Corporate Executive Board on the realities and best practices of executing a social media platform in your company …

While many companies are enticed by social media, most struggle to sustain successful initiatives, particularly when it comes to utilizing new mediums to mobilize their workforce. Companies recognize social media’s potential as a powerful tool for internal communications and thus move forward yet fail to get the anticipated employee-participation levels.

via Keeping Momentum in Social Media – BusinessWeek.

In my experience it comes down to strategy & engagement. The tools and channels will change – that’s a given. It’s your strategy and the level with which you can generate buy-in that impact success.

How Search Engines Rank Web Pages

Steinar — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 23:13:38 +0000

Search for anything using your favorite crawler-based search engine. Nearly instantly, the search engine will sort through the millions of pages it knows about and present you with ones that match your topic. The matches will even be ranked, so that the most relevant ones come first.

Of course, the search engines don’t always get it right. Non-relevant pages make it through, and sometimes it may take a little more digging to find what you are looking for. But, by and large, search engines do an amazing job.

As WebCrawler founder Brian Pinkerton puts it, “Imagine walking up to a librarian and saying, ‘travel.’ They’re going to look at you with a blank face.”

OK — a librarian’s not really going to stare at you with a vacant expression. Instead, they’re going to ask you questions to better understand what you are looking for.

Unfortunately, search engines don’t have the ability to ask a few questions to focus your search, as a librarian can. They also can’t rely on judgment and past experience to rank web pages, in the way humans can.

So, how do crawler-based search engines go about determining relevancy, when confronted with hundreds of millions of web pages to sort through? They follow a set of rules, known as an algorithm. Exactly how a particular search engine’s algorithm works is a closely-kept trade secret. However, all major search engines follow the general rules below.

Location, Location, Location…and Frequency

One of the the main rules in a ranking algorithm involves the location and frequency of keywords on a web page. Call it the location/frequency method, for short.

Remember the librarian mentioned above? They need to find books to match your request of “travel,” so it makes sense that they first look at books with travel in the title. Search engines operate the same way. Pages with the search terms appearing in the HTML title tag are often assumed to be more relevant than others to the topic.

Search engines will also check to see if the search keywords appear near the top of a web page, such as in the headline or in the first few paragraphs of text. They assume that any page relevant to the topic will mention those words right from the beginning.

Frequency is the other major factor in how search engines determine relevancy. A search engine will analyze how often keywords appear in relation to other words in a web page. Those with a higher frequency are often deemed more relevant than other web pages.

Spice In The Recipe

Now it’s time to qualify the location/frequency method described above. All the major search engines follow it to some degree, in the same way cooks may follow a standard chili recipe. But cooks like to add their own secret ingredients. In the same way, search engines add spice to the location/frequency method. Nobody does it exactly the same, which is one reason why the same search on different search engines produces different results.

To begin with, some search engines index more web pages than others. Some search engines also index web pages more often than others. The result is that no search engine has the exact same collection of web pages to search through. That naturally produces differences, when comparing their results.

Search engines may also penalize pages or exclude them from the index, if they detect search engine “spamming.” An example is when a word is repeated hundreds of times on a page, to increase the frequency and propel the page higher in the listings. Search engines watch for common spamming methods in a variety of ways, including following up on complaints from their users.

Off The Page Factors

Crawler-based search engines have plenty of experience now with webmasters who constantly rewrite their web pages in an attempt to gain better rankings. Some sophisticated webmasters may even go to great lengths to “reverse engineer” the location/frequency systems used by a particular search engine. Because of this, all major search engines now also make use of “off the page” ranking criteria.

Off the page factors are those that a webmasters cannot easily influence. Chief among these is link analysis. By analyzing how pages link to each other, a search engine can both determine what a page is about and whether that page is deemed to be “important” and thus deserving of a ranking boost. In addition, sophisticated techniques are used to screen out attempts by webmasters to build “artificial” links designed to boost their rankings.

Another off the page factor is clickthrough measurement. In short, this means that a search engine may watch what results someone selects for a particular search, then eventually drop high-ranking pages that aren’t attracting clicks, while promoting lower-ranking pages that do pull in visitors. As with link analysis, systems are used to compensate for artificial links generated by eager webmasters.

Emedding Youtube Video Options for Your Website

Steinar — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 18:52:28 +0000

YouTube Videos

The cleanest option is to create a video pop-up from within your text (click here)

However, you may wish to create a pop-up from an image, such as this (click on the image)

Creating a pop-up version of your YouTube video is a great option if you want a more streamlined look and feel to your site, rather than intruding on the flow of the text with large blocks of video. It’s also great if you want to reference a video to make a point but readers don’t necessarily have to see the video to understand a specific concept.

Pop-ups with shadowbox format such as this is also considered more cutting edge and elegant to some due to it’s departure from the standard embedded video options provided by YouTube and other video hosting services.

YouTube Embedded Video (click on video below)

Embedding your video is the standard approach to including a YouTube video on your site. There are many options, including size, color, and framing to create an attractive appearance that meets your taste and website style.

Standard (Medium) Size

Smaller Size

Joomla 1.6 – a great CMS for building online communities

Steinar — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 04:30:12 +0000

It’s no secret that we’re huge fans of Wordress, primarily due to its ease of use for those looking to blog, sell some stuff online, or build a loyal following of fans.

Joomla on the other hand is considerably more complexm not only in it’s capabilities but ease of use as well. Once thing that impresses me is the ability to deploy a robust online community portal wherein users may register & participate in the site experience in a much more integrated and meaningful manner vs. WordPress.

The community behind the open source content management system Joomla released version 1.6 earlier this week.

Along with WordPress and Drupal, Joomla helps make up the group of “big three” open source CMS applications. According to statistics from W3Techs, Joomla powers 2% of the web and holds 11% of the CMS market.

Joomla is used for front facing and internal sites for companies like eBay, Citibank, General Electric, IHOP and more. With Joomla 1.6, the goal was to make the package more user-friendly and powerful.

via Joomla 1.6 Offers New Features for Designers & Admins.

Let us know if your company is considering a new site design. Joomla might be the right solution for you.

Apple Mac App Store Screencast Walk Through and Review

Steinar — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:23:33 +0000

The new Mac App Store is finally here …

http://www.apple.com/mac/app-store/ With the Mac App Store, getting the apps you want on your Mac has never been easier. No more boxes, no more disks, no more time-consuming installation. Click once to download and install any app on your Mac. The Mac App Store is now available as a software update for any Mac running Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

September Workshop at PVCC: How to Cost Effectively Drive Audiences To Your Website

Steinar — Wed, 22 Sep 2010 18:37:27 +0000

I’m very excited to host an upcoming workshop at PVCC. If you’re in Charlottesville and would like to learn hands-on how to drive traffic to your website, please register!

How to Cost Effectively Drive Audiences to your Web Site
Thursday, September 30, 9 a.m.- noon
PVCC Stultz Center for Business and Career Development
Instructor: Steinar Knutsen

This workshop is designed for marketing directors, business owners and senior sales pros that need to make their web sites centers of revenue growth. This important and timely three-hour workshop led by industry experts will give you the knowledge and step-by-step techniques you need to succeed online, including how to:

Drive people to your site for FREE using organic search engine marketing
Target and interact with clients-to-be on social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook
Quickly tell if your site is search engine friendly and how to fix it if it isn’t
Use a blog or publishing platform and a publishing strategy to attract qualified visitors

Chamber Member Price: $42 (Class Nbr 58984) Register now

Non-Member Price: $65 (Class Nbr 58983) Register now

Video: My first impressions of iPhone 4

Steinar — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 04:09:10 +0000

I got the iPhone 4 this week. Here’s one of my first videos and some early impressions. After 5 days I still absolutely love it versus my old iPhone 3G.

Some of the key features I like are:

speed – the new processor is much faster than that used in the 3G, so apps load and run noticeably faster
Retina Display – the new display is very crisp and images pop off the screen
camera lens – this phone features a 5MB camera and images are beautiful
video – never had video on the 3G so I’m really getting a kick out of this
Face Time – I’ve used face-to-face conferencing 3 times in the first 7 days and it’s an incredible experience
multitasking – this is a cool feature and potential time saver but I’m not quite used to it yet
folder – again, this is cool in theory but since I don’t really have tons of apps I haven’t taken full advantage of this yet

If you have an iPhone 4 – what’s you experience been like so far?

… Sent from my iPhone

Two killer Facebook Page strategies to target specific users. This is good stuff!!!

Steinar — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 01:33:53 +0000

Facebook Pages are a great way to engage your target market online and here are two great tactics to more specifically target individual users or groups within your niche.

Listen or Download

Mentions in Facebook Page Updates

Mentioning others in your Facebook Page updates is a great way to gain significant exposure for your page. If the other Page’s setting include “Others” then your update will appear on their Page. Why is this so special? Because most folks don’t know this is possible and simply put comments on other Pages’ Walls using their personal profile – not good if your running a business Facebook Page marketing campaign.

1. Become a Fan or Like another page in which you would like to get some exposure

2. In your Facebook Page update use the “@” symbol and pick the name of that Page (or individual) from the dropdown menu that appears

3. Write something flattering or worthy of sharing. You do not want to spam the other Page. If you write something nice that their followers find valuable then it’s a win-win situation.

4. Depending on the setup used by the target Page, your update will either appear directly on their Wall or in a hidden portion of their Wall. To see posts by “others” click on the “filter” link at the top of the Wall.

Geo-targeting in Facebook Page Updates

Geo-targeting is great if you have a broad audience but would only like to speak to a specific portion. For example, you may have a shipping offer only good in the US or a discount only for Chicago residents. Facebook lets you specify who will see you update based on location and language. Very powerful stuff!

To do this simply select the “Custom” link in the lower right hand corner of the update field next to the Share button. Input your Location and/or Language criteria and that’s it. Enjoy!

Any other tips you have for targeting specific users with Facebook Pages? Would love to hear your thoughts!

3 Great WordPress Plugins to Customize Your Blog’s Navigation

Steinar — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 03:12:37 +0000

WordPress 3.o introduced some great new features including an advanced set of Menu options. Nonetheless, I always find the need for additional flexibility to customize what Posts and Pages are shown on my blog, when they’re shown and in what order.

Here are 3 WordPress Plugins to Customize Your Blog’s Navigation:

PageMash: This is one of my all time favorites. It allows to drag and drop Pages into the order you need for navigation. You can also drag and drop child Pages in, out and among Parent pages. This is a real life saver if you several nested Pages and want to change things around a bit.
Exclude Pages from Navigation: This plugin provides a checkbox on the editing page which you can check to exclude pages from the primary navigation. This is useful if you want to have a page “hidden” from everyday visitors or if you really only want people to find it through a link on another Page.
WP-PageNavi: If you have a lot of Posts you’ll like this plugin, which adds a more advanced paging navigation to your WordPress blog. For example, instead “previous” and “next” at the bottom, this plugin will help create a numbered index of Posts, such as Prev, 1,2,3, Next, Last. It may require some custom CSS depending on your theme, but the end result is quote nice.

Any other WordPress Plugins you recommend to customize your blog’s navigation?

6 Ways to Improve Your Business Facebook Page

Steinar — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 02:43:02 +0000

Facebook Pages are a great way to leverage the largest social media platform and connect with folks in your target market. Here are some tactics I’ve been using to improve my business Facebook Page and those of my clients.

1. Consistently post new content. If people have “liked your page they’ve basically given you permission to communicate with them. Don’t be bashful – post new content on a regular basis to maximize the opportunity. One warning – don’t post too frequently or you might annoy them. Find a proper balance that’s acceptable for your audience.

2. Add some variety to your content. Don’t just post links or one-liners. Mix it up with pictures, videos, links to local events, articles on related content, and links to your blog articles. Also, use Notes to post longer updates, much like you would with a blog post. Finally, try asking questions or taking a poll to drive engagement.

3. Add some customization. Did you know you can have up to 6 tabs on your Facebook Page? The Wall and Info tabs are not optional, but you can customize the remaining 4 tabs with something unique. There are several apps to create tabs from Youtube, Twitter, and LinkedIn, but I also recommend you create a couple tabs with FBML. This basically gives you the flexibility to add HTML much like a Webpage.

4. Make it fun. If your Facebook Page is all business, people might get bored. Even the Wall Street Journal has comics.

5. Connect with other social media platforms. Most people know you can connect Twitter to your Facebook Page so that new updates gets tweeted. This will help drive traffic. You can also connect your blog RSS feed so that new posts appear in your Facebook Wall. Why do this? One, for efficiency and two, to help spread the word and connect your followers across multiple platforms. It’s no different that including your website address and phone number in a print ad.

6. Have a call to action. What do you ultimately want your Facebook Fans to do? Call? Sign-up for something? Visit your website? Share your content? If you never ask you can’t expect them to guess. Be bold and ask them to take action.

What have I missed? What other advice do you have for improving business Facebook Pages?

… sent from my iPad