The 3 WP Tools You Need to 5X Your Workflow
One of my goals for 2016 is to take my blog more seriously. In fact, I have accountability setup with Bryan Harris wherein if I don’t post once a week he will charge my credit card $500 (for charity he says). Either way, that’s a negative consequence that will keep me consistent in my writing habit.
I’ve been using WordPress for years now; I’ve wasted many hours messing around trying to fix things. Over the past six months I’ve found 3 tools that I’ve fallen in love with and have been helping me stay consistent.
These are:
- Marketer’s Delight — the BEST wordpress theme ever (IMO)
- Convertkit — the best email software (and I’ve tried 6 others)
- WP Curve — the assistant you didn’t know you needed.
The Reasons Why I Love Thee…
Marketer’s Delight:
Marketer’s Delight is the BEST WordPress theme I’ve ever found. If you’re a blogger/marketer or have a personal brand, it was designed specifically for you. I use it here on LittleMight, and we used it over at BestSelf before we switched to Shopify (for our online store.)
When my business partner Allen came to me last month looking for a theme, it was the only one I could recommend 100%.
Here’s everything you can do with it:
1. Create forms that look great & connect to your email:
It’s this simple:
Right now MD connects to AWeber, MailChimp, ActiveCampaign , ConvertKit , and your own custom email form code. More in the works.o
2. Add feature images to your titles to make it pop:
Makes styling beautiful blog posts super easy. Like this:
3. Custom design pop-ups show up at the right time:
A new feature just added allows you to design custom forms for opt-in + exit captures:
4. Looks awesome across all devices:
5. Amazing support (and constant updates):
Not only is the product amazing, but it is also constantly updated with new features, and the support is second to none. Not convinced? Check out this random email I got from the creator, Alex:
Don’t think I’ve ever bought anything that offered that level of support before. If you’re interested you can grab it for a one-time cost of $79 here.
(yes he’s charging way too low for this, but shusshhh don’t tell him… )
2. ConvertKit:
An email marketing service that turns complex into simple. Don’t believe me, check out their 5 min demo. I’ve previously used every email provider from Mailchimp to Aweber to ActiveCampaign. As someone who wants to get stuff done and doesn’t enjoy messing around with platforms, Convertkit made it easy to stick to and actually want to use. Here’s why:
1. Beautiful opt-in forms & Landing Pages
I’m a stickler for design and don’t like to use products that don’t look good… it makes me feel bad, seriously. Convertkit opt-ins are sexy, minimal and responsive, so whether on a homepage or sidebar — they look awesome.
So many choices…
Beauty comes in many forms:
2. Tagging & Segmenting
Convertkit uses a tagging system that is super simple to use and is based on an opt-in form, clicked link or other automation feature. It makes crafting content for particular audiences easy. For example, if someone opted in for something Kickstarter related I can send them Kickstarter relevant content rather than someone who is interested in productivity.
This segmenting/tagging can be done across all your subscribers regardless of the forms/lists they’re on.
3. One email address = 1 subscriber
This seems like common sense but unfortunately not, previously when I used Aweber and MailChimp if someone opted into two places they counted as two subscribers. So in cases, I would have the same person being counted as two different contacts solely due to them being on different segments of my list. For big lists, this can really affect your billing if you’re paying for one subscriber multiple times.
Pat Flynn with an email list of over 26,000 recently moved from Aweber to Convertkit and realized he had some subscribers opted into as many as five different places (5X the cost).
With Convertkit one email address counts for one email.
4. Easy form statistics
Convertkit forms allow you see quick stats of where you are and which forms are working best. They show you how many have seen it, have opted in, and what the conversion rate is. Since I’ve started with ConvertKit I’ve stopped needing to use Leadpages completely.
Here’s how the dashboard looks:
3. WP Curve:
WP Curve is the WordPress personal assistant that I never knew I always needed/wanted/dreamed of…
It’s a monthly service that I use to do all things WordPress. Can you imagine never having another WordPress a headache? WP Curve will do an unlimited number of small jobs that take 30 mins or less for $69 a month. That’s 30 mins for experts, which means about 5 hours in my time. Now something that used to take me hours I now offload it to them in about 5 seconds, which is how long it takes me to send them an email.
For example, yesterday I noticed my theme for the blog looked different than what I wanted on mobile. Instead of even looking into why that was
(yes, I’m lazy) I screencapped my phone and sent them this email:
They fixed it and emailed me back within 6 hours. Booosh!
P.S. That email I got from Alex from Marketer’s Delight with design changes, I forwarded that puppy right over to WP Curve to take care of. 12 hours later and voila, happy Cat (that’s me).
There it is, everything you need to remove the headaches from WordPress.
Originally published at www.littlemight.com.
