Shoemoney - Skills To Pay The Bills

5 Plugins to Turn Your WordPress into a Lead Generating Machine

Posted: 29 Apr 2014 07:00 AM PDT

(Assuming you’re old enough to know what a record is…)

Ever hear what a broken record sounds like?

It repeats again and again and again. Quite annoying actually.

Ever hear what a broken record sounds like?

It repeats again and again and again. Quite annoying actually.

Ever hear what a broken record..

Ok, you get the point.

Ever since I started sharing with people about my experiences in marketing, the #1 most frequently asked question that never seems to die is… “how do I get more traffic?”

When I go to gym, gym newbies always ask me the same type of question: “how do I lose weight?”.

There is no magic. Eat less, move more.

Ain’t no magic in marketing either: create good content and share them. Earn links. Either that or pay for it.

Everyone wants the quick fix, magic bullet.

Well, if it was that easy, then I guess everyone would be rich and famous.

Ok, that’s not actionable.

Fine. I’ll tell you what.

There are quick tools you can do to your blog to make them generate more business leads for you.

If you have a wordpress blog (or any CMS really, but I’m a WP fan), there are quick & easy wordpress plugins that you can use right now to generate more busienss leads.

1) Non Closeable Javascript Popup

I’m sure you’ve seen those blogs, where this popup asks you to do something before you can read the content.

NY Times, Wall Street Journal, ShoeMoney, and even my blog… we use them because they are quite effective.

Some may say that they’re annoying and quite interruptive in user experience.

Hey, did you start a business blog to get a pat on the head or to improve your business?

I rest my case.

Options:

There are tons, but the one that I like personally is Displet Pop. Free, easy to use.

2) Scroll Triggered Box

If your reader read your post from top to bottom, that means they are engaged.

When they get to the bottom of the post, that is the PERFECT time to ask them to do anything.

There are several options

- ask them to share your post on Facebook/Twitter
- ask them to subscribe to your email
- ask them to check out other posts

What works best? I don’t know, but I do prefer email optin because with email, you can send personalized messages and build relationship where as the other two actions are one time, fleeting actions.

Options: Dreamgrow Scroll Triggered Box is quite good. Free too.

3) Contact form to autoresponder

If someone is contacting you, the odds are that they’re “engaged” enough to warrant a relationship with you.

If you have an autoresponder (and if you don’t and you call yourself a marketer, please bang your head against the keyboard now), wouldn’t it be great if you can merge that contact info to that list so you can send him future messsages?

Options: If you use contact form 7 and mailchimp, I use the free plugin “CF7 AutoResponder Addon“. It’s free but it limits you to only 1 list and has no group functionality. Mailchimp for WP is free & very good as well.

4) Share My Quote

Believe it or not, copy/paste is STILL the most popular way of sharing content online, not those Like/Tweet buttons.

So wouldn’t it be great if you can actually get people to link to your site and give you credit too?

I wrote a wordpress plugin called Share My Quote that, when installed, gives you backlinks to your blog if someone decides to use copy/paste.

It works super well on sites that are heavy in text, like blogs, recipe sites, lyric sites, how-tos, quote sites, etc.

Options: Share My Quote . It’s free.

5) Call to Action after the content

Problem with scroll triggered box is that

it doesn’t work on mobile, where most of the internet traffic is going to
it doesn’t work on javascript disabled browsers
the reader might not necessarily look at it if your most engaging content is not in same spatial arrangement

WordPress has “About Author” box that shows up there, but I like to add additional content where people can optin to my newsletter by offering something.

BUT REMEMBER…

These are just tools.

Ain’t no tool gonna do a damn thing if the person using the tool is a complete turd.

If I gave someone the tools used by Michaelangelo to create the Statue of David, will he create the next historical master piece? Probably not.

Remember to hone your marketing skills (hell there are so many free marketing resources for this, so why not take advantage of them?), not just install these tools and expect them to work wonders for you

PS: By the way… If you are having trouble with WordPress, I help with wordpress installation for free. Ah yes, the sound of free… the greatest music to anyone’s ears…

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