A lot of people are intimidated by online marketing and think that it is a very hard thing to do. But it is really easy to do and I am blogging about it in this article. Before I start, I will assume that you are not one of those people who are looking for ‘get rich quick’ mantras. Also, let me tell you that this is not a magical silver bullet which doesn’t involve any work or time investment.

During my experiences as a blog writer, I realized that there are some things that you cannot avoid. Here are four cornerstones or pillars for building and marketing any business.

Relationships – You need to create strong relationships with your audience and this is important everywhere. Instead of hunting for the new customers, I would recommend you to create a valued environment which benefits the existing customers and readers. You should be able to keep them coming back for more. Your readers should spread the word for you and bring in more people to your blog.

Direct response copywriting –

You need to keep yourself updated with the latest social media trends or create them sometimes. Once you find a good topic to write on, sit back and come up with killer headlines. Then move through your story strategically for creating something that holds the attention of your readers. Follow the old-school copywriting advice for making a difference between a blog which fades in to oblivion and the one which flourishes successfully.

Content marketing – This is my ace – delivering great content is of utmost importance. You should deliver great content and it should be focussed in one direction. It is also recommended that you develop a strategy for this. One great way to do this is to offer some cash money to readers or come up with something else where the reader benefits.

Have something that is worth selling – Everyone out there is looking to sell something. This might be product, service, idea, download or even a worthy cause. The thing that you are selling needs to be worth the price. You should never forget that the attention of the reader is a very valuable commodity and it is also limited in supply. When you ask for dollars, pounds, yen or any valuables, you need to deliver on something which is worth the asking price.

I have given my four bits above and it is up to you to bring these four pillars together while blogging. Together, these four can do wonders but if you miss even one of them; you might not get the desired success.

Right now, WordPress is the most versatile blogging platform out there and you get tons of options for customization. You not only get to change the look and feel of the blog but you can also change the way your users interact with the content that you have put. Maybe this is the reason why WordPress is used very widely. However, you might be tempted to use a lot of options and this might make your blog look bloated. I am blogging about a few simple steps to make your blog look better –

Overall design of the blog

This is the most obvious thing in a blog. If the content that you put is going to make your blog grow and if you are attempting to attract a lot of people then the design of your blog must complement all the time. Simple design too might do the trick and there is no need for high end eye candy everywhere. Also, it is really important that your WordPress Blog theme highlights your content first. If you do this, your readers will get what they came for in the first place.

Comments

For me, the comment section is one of the only place to interact with your readers and I don’t understand why people put a lot of different plugins or features which crowd the comments place. For instance, there are some blogs who have messy comment fields and you don’t know where to begin. It can get very confusing.

Social sharing

Social media and social networking is seen everywhere these days; it is simply unavoidable and in one way, it is a good thing. You’d want people to engage with the content but you would also want to make people share it with others. Here too simplicity is the key. I go through a few blogs everyday and see a lot of mess in social sharing etiquette. There are sharing icons cloase to the blog, on a single post layer and also close to the comments! You need to choose wisely and you will be rewarded well.

It’s hardly been a month since Google’s+1 button was out and it is already common on major Websites. The +1 button is now more widespread than Tweet button. BrightEdge, who is an SEO platform enterprise developer studied about 10,000 sites out on Web sand found 33 percent placement for the Google +1 button in the past few days. The company says that +1 button is not on 4.4 percent sites up from 3.6 percent in the month of June. On the other hand, the Twitter plug ins are shown in just 3.4 percent of sites.

Both Twitter and Google are trailing behind Facebook whose ‘Like’ button is seen on 20 percent of sites front page. The chart shown below shows Twitter’s plug in button as Twitter Share but Jim Yu, the BrightEdge CEO calls it Twitter Tweet button.

‘Like’ button of Facebook turned up on about 50,000 sites a week after it was launched in last April. In just one month, the number rose to 100,000 sites. On the other hand, Twitter’s Tweet button came in August.

The study has also noted adoption for the links to Twitter feeds or Facebook Pages on the front pages. These links are more famous than the buttons. However, more than half or 51% of sites still don’t have a link for Twitter or Facebook on the front page.

Let me start by telling you that I am a big fan of content marketing just like all the readers of this blog. Good quality content is really important for selling well on the Internet. You should put in time to write authoritive and useful articles which provide real value for your potential customers and you are half way to your bank before the clients land up on your Website. Of course, you shouldn’t use just one technique for getting more clients. It is really important that you research more and come up with your own dough. After you have started putting great content, the next step is to attract clients and here are my three bits on how to do that.

After content marketing, Twitter is my next best bet for getting more clients.

Step one:

I click in my Hootsuite dashboard (this is available on Twitter console too).

Step two:

I look for phrases which match the services that are offered by me. I then comb through results and then find tweets which match guys who are looking for my services.

Step three:

I then click blogs from the tweets which match with my criteria and do one of these – 1) leave comments 2) Submit message through contact form 3) Send e-mail if address is listed.

That is all I do and have had great success to date. I’ve got more clients this way as compared to content marketing. Having good quality meaning full content will increase your chances of clients signing up with you. Content is always the king.

I got this technique from a newspaper piece in which the article was discussed about a business owner who tried using blog posts for getting more clients. He was having a really bad time with it and wasn’t getting a lot of clients. Thus he gave up content marketing thinking that it is too demanding. On the other hand, I just picked up the good parts from this article and didn’t stop content marketing because for me, it is one of the best tools.