In the current world of digital-everything, there are vast libraries of information available to anyone who wants to know how to market their business online. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the information out there. So, we’ve put together a list of WordPress Marketing Tools you can apply to your business today.
Here’s what you absolutely must have in place to BEGIN marketing your website. A simple checklist, if you will, of the fundamentals your website needs. A home base. A launch pad.
In the digital marketing environment of today, content creation is of paramount importance. As such, we’re going to focus this article on items that focus on content creation as a fundamental basis of your digital marketing strategy.
OK, let’s get into the WordPress Marketing Tools!
Here at WMYS, we love working with WordPress. It’s by far the most popular CMS (Content Management System) out there and chances are if you have a website, you’re currently already using it. And if you’re not, Talk to us if you need help moving to WordPress.
This is where you will be writing your blog posts. Writing to a blog post creates words that Google can index. That’s good for you, because if someone is searching for information that you can provide, they’ll maybe find your article and go to your website. Which means you’ve got their attention.
DO NOT expect immediate results. This will take time and you will need to work hard consistently in your content creation efforts for a long time until you start to see some real results. Just don’t give up, keep at it and make sure everything you do is optimized by following the other steps in this article.
Again, another thing that I’m sure you’ve heard enough about. But the fact remains, you’re going to have to deal with it.
Luckily, since you’re using a WordPress site, optimizing your blog content for SEO is super easy, thanks to a wonderful tool called Yoast SEO.
OK, now that we’ve got Yoast installed, let’s hop back into our Posts area and start writing a blog post. Write a title and some copy, then scroll down below the text area where you see the Yoast area and look for the field called focus keyword.
This is a screenshot of the Yoast I did for this very post you’re reading.
This is where you need to put yourself in the shoes of your target customer. If you were them trying to find whatever product or service you’re providing, what would you type in Google. Type that in here. See how Yoast suddenly started giving all these tips on how you can improve your site?
You want to try and get as many green dots as possible.
Now you can just follow these steps and you will have an optimized blog post.
Don’t go for broad keywords, especially not if you’re starting out. Go for what’s referred to as long tail keywords. That just means, focus on very specific keywords, which tend to be longer, focus on your niche. Here’s a great article on long-tail keywords.
One of the major hurdles that many business owners struggle to get over is one that is probably the most important right after adding value.
And I mention business owners here because, speaking out of experience, it is very hard to find the time to actually sit and do this stuff. There’s always a million things to do and not enough time.
Here’s the thing though: You’re never going to FIND the time. You have to MAKE time.
This is such a fundamentally important mind-shift that you have to make. This is where you need to draw a line in the sand and say, this is the time I’m dedicating to my marketing.
I find that going to my calendar and scheduling a recurring event is the best way to achieve this. And block this time out, don’t think of this time as open, schedule it as busy, as important as meeting a client.
Another important thing to do with this time is Deep Focus. According to Cal Newport’s book Deep Work, the most productive times are those where you focus all your mental energy on the task at hand.
I literally put my phone on the ‘Do Not Disturb Mode’ (so that only family can call me if they really need to reach me) and I hunker down for 2-3 hours at a time to either work on content, fill up my content calendar (next section of this post) or work on creating lead magnets.
I do this at least twice a week, but more often 3 times. And it’s worked wonders for me.
You’d be amazed at how much you can do with 3 hours of non-distracted, deep work time.
This is also closely related to the above point. Consistency is best achieved by putting time on the calendar. This needs to be organized well though. Luckily, there are great are great WordPress Marketing Tools out there to help you keep to an awesome content calendar.
I’m going to look at 2 of them: CoSchedule (Paid) and Trello (Free), both of which I’ve used extensively.
This is an awesome Saas product that you can use right from your WordPress dashboard. CoSchedule allows you to plan all your future posts (drafts) on your calendar which will then publish at those dates. It then let’s you link all your social media platforms to it to then promote your content.
Don’t worry about being blocked for being spammy, CoSchedule will intelligently post at the best times of the day and also takes into consideration how often you’re posting to avoid not seeming spammy.
What I really love about CoSchedule is the ReQueue, which re-uses your evergreen social media posts again and again.
So, if you’re just starting out and want to save as much $ as possible, I suggest using Trello as a tool for your content calendar.
I haven’t used the Trello calendar in a while but it’s easy to plan and move your content around.
The important thing here is again, Consistency. Stick to your content calendar and block out time on your actual calendar to do this stuff, I can’t stress this enough.
Yes, of course, we’re going to have to talk about this. It’s a fact of life, and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Your business needs to have a social media presence, so this needs to be in your WordPress Marketing Tools Toolbox.
I’m not going to go into detail about how you can grow your social audiences, but I do want to show you how to integrate those in such a way that they become spokes on the wheel that still revolve around the Hub of your marketing: Your website.
You need a Facebook Page for your company, if you don’t already have one. Create one, add your hours and description, your logo, your page header.
Create a Twitter Profile, if you don’t have one already and use a tool like CoSchedule or Buffer to tweet links to your blog posts, but make sure you also tweet other peoples stuff, that you find helpful.
OK, this you’ll still have to do manually, but it’s fun and easy. Do 1 Instagram post a day, document yourself doing your work, especially funny and interesting moments and use Lots of hashtags.
Of all the marketing tools out there, Email is still arguably the most powerful. Once you’ve built up an email list, you have a group of people that trust you and that want to hear from you. And that list is yours, it’s not dependent on whatever algorithm Facebook decides to use to show your content, you can contact your entire list whenever you want. Don’t be spammy, or you’ll find your list decreasing quickly. The key here is to provide value. And be consistent.
If you’re just starting out, I would recommend using Mailchimp as your list/email campaign provider and then using a WordPress Marketing Tool that I really love: Bloom.
The trick is to get people to agree to give you their email address. And you need to give them something in return for this. This is what many people refer to as a lead magnet. Something like a guide to something specific in your industry or an ebook.
Once your list starts gaining traction and you are growing, you can graduate from Mailchimp to something like ConvertKit, an awesome tool with a very specific focus on adding value: Convertkit.
This is how Google sees your site. Kind of important, don’t you think?
Do this step only after you’ve done everything above. And only if you really need results in the short term.
OK, so this next part is a bit of a departure from the WordPress Marketing Tools above, but it’s still worth taking note of, for any website owner. Pay Per Clicks is simply now a catch-all term for paid advertising on Search and Social Media. This is a great way to get short term results, while you wait to build up your content library for organic results.
This is not for everyone though as this costs money and if you’re not set up to quickly convert traffic into leads and leads into customers it can quickly become unsustainable.
That said, if pulled off, you can create a machine where you put in quarters to get dollars.
My favorite PPC platform is Google Adwords. Remember the following when setting up a Google Adwords account. If you need exact steps on how to set up a Google Adwords account, check out our post on How to Set Up a Google Adwords Campaign.
This is a big influence on where your website ranks in Google. Make sure your site loads as fast as possible.
Use this tool: Pingdom Website Speed Test. Pay attention to only one metric: Load Time.
This is the only metric that matters, ignore the score or whatever it gives you. Just make sure your load time is under 3 seconds. Then you’re good. This is one of the most important WordPress Marketing Tools in your toolbox.
Smush Images: Image size is a huge factor when it comes to loading speed. I generally try to make the images small BEFORE I even upload them to my site.
Firstly, make sure the image Dimensions are as small as they need to be. For a fullwidth (full screen) image, a width of about 1800px would suffice. For inline images, anything under 800px wide is good.
Then, once your image is resized, throw it into this thing: TinyPNG. This will SMUSH your image into a tiny filesize. WIN!
If you need to resize images in bulk, try their WordPress Plugin. This has a limit for the free version though, where the website does not, so try smush your images BEFORE you upload them to your website.
Server Speed: None of the above will matter if your server speed is slow. If you’re uncertain of what host to choose. We recommend Siteground or WP Engine. Read this post from Cloudwards to learn about all the other WP hosting options, ranked.
We hope these WordPress Marketing Tools were helpful. WordPress is a wonderful platform for your marketing efforts and following the above points can help you leverage your site to become a lead-generating machine. If you need help with any of the above, Drop us a Line.