What university courses would be suitable for an internet marketer?

I graduated with a marketing degree back in 2002 from a very good business school, but everything I've learned about IM has been "on the job." I hope that college business schools would add these courses, but I haven't been on the lookout.

IMO, many of the things I learned in school have not been applied. Becoming familiar with behavioral trends online seems more important to me than learning about viewer response rates to tv ads (taught in college).

So to answer your question...look for any kind of class that deals with "new media" - maybe the schools have caught on.

English. Learn to write well and you can bluff your way through life.

Cultural studies is also a great field, since it's very relevant to everyday life and advertising.

Sociology and anthropology are two more fields to take electives in that could be helpful.

Writing, coding, psychology...

If you learned a second language and were able to apply internet marketing to markets of other languages, that would be a HUGE advantage.

Marketing, writing and BUSINESS PLANNING are the key skills. You won't learn them in University. You'll learn them by doing this stuff.

I have an engineering degree and an MBA. Hasn't really made diddly squat difference to my online activities.

Web design, eBusiness, etc - any course that equips you with the skills for building websites and knowing how to use servers etc. You can learn all the marketing stuff in your own time.

Philosophy.

No matter what you do, I think that knowledge of philosophy (hehe, knowledge of the love of wisdom) can seriously make you better at whatever it is that you do.

I can relate to this as I am a current college student at a large state university.

My major is Entrepreneurship. However, you won't take too many classes that will necessarily help you until maybe your second year but usually the serious business classes will start your third year.

I have taken very few classes thus far that helped, but here are some that did:

1. English - you will have to take 4 semesters with most business degrees so pay attention. Most english classes are somewhat BS, meaning my High School Senior English was harder than both the English Compositition Classes I took as a freshman in college. However, you will explore writing and this was a great help to me. Just learning how to brainstorm and how to tranform your ideas into words. So try to take as many composition classes as you can tolerate.

2. Basic Computer classes - These come in lots of different variations ranging from the most basic computer how to all the way to more advanced concepts like graphic design and web design. I haven't taken any graphic or web classes yet. However, I did take a class as a freshman that was a requirement for my degree that covered all the cool programs most of us use everyday like Word, Excel, Powerpoint.

3. Intro to business - While these are rarely aimed towards onilne businesses you can still learn the basics that you need to start a business.

4. Entrepreneurship - I'm am taking this class this year and has been the best class I've taken thus far in my college career. We even had some chapters on Online Business (touched lightly on SEO, etc).

When we were discussing this chapter the teacher started directing all the questions to "that guy in the back corner" once he found out I did this on a daily basis. We were discussing a business idea that someone had pitched to the teacher once. The idea was an online jeans comparison site for women. The teacher asked the class how we could monetize this idea. Of course everyone in the class was saying "sell it to the online sites that sell jeans".

Here was my answer - "I would not necessarily want to sell this to online stores because this one be a one time sale and I want to build a business. I would require all users to 'register' their account before posting or browsing and thus would capture their email. After this I could send them helpful info and affiliate offers to jeans at other sites . . ."

This of course seems like a natural thing to do for us who are familiar with IM, but to others this isn't always obvious.

The thing is you will need to take classes that you are interested in and try to see how you can use it in your own business.

Good Luck

I would take as many writing classes as possible.

The education systems are decades behind real life - you're not going to find a course that will replace what you can learn by doing it yourself.

If you really want something to study make it copywriting - everything revolves around this and all of the technical stuff can easily be outsourced. Finding a good copywriter will always cost you big bucks because it's what makes all the difference.

Many people here focus on IM stuff but the thing that will always make the most difference is how you get your message to people - bad message always means poor sales.

I second the vote for psychology and other social sciences. You can learn the technical side of things (building websites, basic graphics, etc) on your own pretty easily (or at least outsource them more cheaply), but if you don't know how to target someone's motivations and desires to get them to buy, you aren't going to succeed.

Granted, this is coming from someone with a degree in Environmental Sciences, so take that for what you will...

Stay away from Universities. You don't need them. You need to study AND IMPLEMENT Internet Marketing.

Don't waste your time in college. They will just fill your head with a lot of non-sense that the professors know NOTHING about! I graduated from USC, I am a die hard football fan, but honestly, my professors were Morons, well, except for one. They were clueless about life. I spent 8 years teaching middle school after I graduated, and NOTHING i learned in college applied, nor does it apply to my internet marketing life.

Graduating from college does not measure intelligence, it measures determination, if you are determined to be successful, you will be successful. Good luck!

I've always wanted to know as well, I've been wanting to go back to school, but IM takes too much of my time, I was thinking of studying psychology, I'm pretty damn sure that will help out as well

My view of Education is that it teaches you how to LEARN. As you study for your exams and term papers, you discover HOW you learn best and WHEN you are most able to absorb and so on... In other words, you learn more about how you yourself are able to pick up new knowledge. Then, this allows you to translate that into IM in the sense that you now know what is your best "learning style". Sheesh! Writing that has just put a light bulb on for my own IM issues...