This article is part of a series – Internet Marketing For Every WordPress Startup.
- Part 1 of the guide to marketing explains why good communication skills through blog, transparency and friendliness are essential ingredients of every successful WordPress startup and how all your efforts will be multiplied by the level of passion you show for your work.
- Part 2 turns your attention to things that will convince others of your quality service by demonstrating your credibility and availability.
- Part 3 is all about search engine optimization.
Having an online presence has become mandatory. It’s the easiest and most efficient way of establishing yourself within a niche of your interest and eventually finding your future clients. But having presence is not enough these days. You have to be able to communicate your ideas on a personal level with your audience and let them get to know you if you intend for those people to come back for more. In order to do this you apparently need something called – communication skills.
The ingredients for a successful WordPress Theme Building startup and every web designer or developer, for that matter, are the following:
- Blog
- Transparency
- Friendliness
- Credibility
- Availability
- Being polite to Search Engines – SEO
If you’ve just woken up from your everyday routine and you want to change something, then get ready for the first three items on our menu – We’re starting up with a blog, why and how to be transparent, friendly and open about yourself and the things you do. Credibility and availability will be tackled in part 2 and I’ll leave SEO for desert.
Let’s begin with what should be the pillar stone of all your efforts – the blog.
1. Writing a Blog, Not a Brag
Start writing a Blog about anything and everything you do. Don’t think about search engines or promotion when creating your first copy. Don’t even worry about punctuation. If you’re using WordPress then toggle “fullscreen mode” in the text editor. It completely blinds everything except for the writing window. This will result in an undisturbed flow of your thoughts producing unique and quality content.
Web designers, you will have to think infographics, videos and tutorials, which can be uploaded on YouTube or Vimeo and embedded on your website later on. You can use your projects as an inspiration and talk about design process and problems you had to overcome.
Producing fresh and unique content is something search engines value, so consider your future blog the most important step toward making your website visible to others in your area of interest. If you want your peers to connect with you easily, consider using an author box plugin that will present you in the best possible manner, giving people opportunity to engage you on major social networks.
Being a place of meeting new start-ups, you can turn your blog into a network of people gathered around one common idea, by following the guidelines listed below.
2. Transparency
You did something wrong, you messed up your code and you’ve just realized everybody’s going to find out. So what?
Instead of hiding a mistake, be open about it, admit an error and let everybody know you’re working on fixing it, making your product or service even better and greater than it was before.
Maybe you forgot about the people that got used to reading your articles?
Write a post about why you’ve neglected your subscribers. They’ll understand. Everybody needs a break from time to time.
Don’t hide behind your website, but rather use it as your résumé or even more personal, as your working diary or write about your principles of work. People are intrigued by these things and love the opportunity to peek inside somebody’s head.
3. Friendliness
Being friendly goes a long way. Try to make people feel comfortable and important when you talk to them. It’s one of those things that applies to anything you do. Whether you’re replying to a blog comment, an email or you’re just trying to reach out to your future clients, being friendly and open about yourself is crucial.
Linking To Similar Blogs
If you link your quality content to others, others will link back to you. Not to mention that people who read your blog posts will benefit from having an opportunity to perceive the topic from multiple aspects. Focus on providing value even if it means rerouting visitors to someone else’s blogs.
You will be appreciated for your good intentions and unselfishness. Keep doing this, remain patient and you will see results.
Guest Blogging
If you have great things to write about, you should spread your knowledge across multiple blogs. Find people that are interested in WordPress development or design and offer them a free blog post.
Start building a relationship first by following them on twitter, reading their blog, commenting on posts, etc. Once they notice you and see that you have valuable content on your own blog, you can ask to write something for them.
You guest posts should contain backlinks to your own articles, products or services.
Commenting On Blogs
Make sure to visit similar blogs and post helpful comments that will ensure your on-line presence and get people to notice you. Few things in life feel as good as helping others, so use this opportunity to be valuable and make new friends along the way.
Commenting gives you a chance to link back to your content. I suggest linking to a similar post on your blog, instead of always linking back to your homepage.
You know how people often talk about the importance of being professional? Well, things changed long time ago in the world of internet and dare I say, in the world, period. Nobody likes those uptight guys anymore. People are looking for someone genuine and someone they can relate to.
Eventually, you will be recognized in your niche if you’re personal and unreservedly passionate about what you do, but this is not something you can gain from reading some internet marketing guide. Your will, determination and sweat make up 90% of your success, the other 10% is just us, marketing guys, writing about how to put all that energy to good use.
If I forgot to mention something, please feel free to comment and share your ideas. Hope to see you soon in part two of this series when I continue with our list of internet marketing techniques for WordPress startups.
Until then, stay passionate.
Dragan Nikolic
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Great Post Dragan –
Remind your readers that it is important to implement long term marketing strategies.
Thinking long term will bring you a steady stream of targeted traffic. The strategies listed in your post will help to produce results many years down the road. Some good long term marketing strategies are opt-in lists, blogging about your product or having others blog about it, social network sites, article marketing and giving away free products.
Cheers!
George
Thanks for stopping by George,
Yes, long term is the way to go and no quick-fix will ever do it for Google or any other search engine as their algorithms are being improved on a daily bases.
I’ll make sure to include opt-ins and freebies in the article. Thanks for reminding me.
Cheers
For your Internet marketing efforts to be successful, you need to continually refine your website. No matter how much planning you put into your business website before it goes live, no site will ever be perfect. As time goes along, continue to take stock of what Is working and what is not. Do not be so attached to your original design that you overlook areas that could use some improvement.
No objections here. You can always refine everything you do, it’s just a matter of determining priorities.
Thanks for your comment.