So you run a startup and decided to do some content marketing for the organic traffic. And then you read somewhere that WordPress is the best tool for your content marketing efforts (yes, you’re right). So what next?
Finding the best WordPress plugins for your content marketing is no easy task, with thousands of WordPress plugins out there and dozens being launched daily. Here’s where we play a role. Read on after the break to find out the best WordPress plugins for your Content Marketing and blogging efforts.
WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : An Introduction
Recently, a bunch of my 9-weeks coding bootcamp friends decided to start different startups. Inadvertently, we moved to the topic on traffic and how bare Ruby on Rails is compared to WordPress for their content marketing.
So they began to pepper me with questions on WordPress, the viability of content marketing on WordPress and which plugins should they get. After all, to the lay person, all WordPress plugins are the same (not) and free plugins are good enough for their blogging efforts (not really either).
Content marketing on WordPress has improved leaps and bounds since the early days. Nowadays, you can run content marketing campaigns on WordPress and get your editorial and social marketing team onboard at the same time. There are plugins that help you get Google’s Rich Snippets on your articles and others that helps optimise your content.
Read : 5 Reasons Your Blog Should Be On WordPress
With more content-focused plugins being built for WordPress, you won’t go wrong with WordPress for your startup. Below, we present the best WordPress plugins for content marketing.
1) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : Yoast SEO
So we were having coffee after some nasi lemak and tandoori chicken. And when I told them that content is needed for social marketing to do well, my friend’s face changed and she suddenly said that she doesn’t really know how to write.
The great thing about Yoast SEO is their page analysis function. With that, you can write articles that conform well to Google’s algorithm, making your content stand out better. The page analysis tool also helps evaluate your writing via the Flesch Reading Ease score. In short, it is all you need to help optimise your blog posts.
And with Yoast SEO, you get better as you write. This happens when your published posts begin to hit the first page of Google and conversions start happening for your startup.
2) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : Thrive Headline Optimizer
Headlines are crucial. For most of us, our busy schedule means we skim the headlines, only reading more if we find the headlines of an article interesting. But writing great headlines is difficult. And how do sites like Upworthy and Huffington Post do it?
Simple, via automation that tests dozens of headlines before selecting the best one for your article based on click-through rates. And while it might cost a fair bit to cobble together a headline optimising system, what if you can buy one for a fairly affordable price?
For me, Thrive Headline Optimizer is a God-sent. With it, I can easily write my blog posts, set a few headlines up and let it automate the process of choosing the best converting headline. And best of all, it’s cheap.
Read our Thrive Headline Optimizer Review here.
Visit Thrive Headline Optimizer
3) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : CoSchedule
In social media and content marketing for WordPress, we’re divided to the time of before CoSchedule and after CoSchedule was launched. (something like Before Christ and after that). But seriously speaking, before CoSchedule, there wasn’t an integrated tool that just works for content marketers and bloggers.
Rather, if you were focused on content marketing, you would need to either have a manual editorial calendar or use the Editorial Calendar plugin. And then the social media aspects of your content needed to be manually added to Buffer to ensure they were posted on time.
In comparison, with CoSchedule, you now have an easy to use interface that only cost you $19 per month. I use CoSchedule for both my sites as it makes it easy for me to view my posts and the upcoming social media promotion.
Read our CoSchedule Review here
4) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : WP Rich Snippets
Have you searched on Google and found articles with special stars under them or perhaps googled the name of an artist and found their album cover with their latest song displaying on the first position of Google? That my friend is rich snippets.
Rich snippets tell the search engines what your article is about, helping them understand the context of your article clearly.
In writing this article, I’ve bought and tested numerous rich snippets plugin and found WP Rich Snippets does the job perfectly. As it is frequently updated, you can be sure that you don’t need to redo your reviews if the plugin stops working.
Starting at a low price of $69 to a lifetime license of $399, WP Rich Snippets is affordable and the best rich snippets plugin for WordPress.
5) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : OptinMonster
So you write articles and get some readership. You then need them sign up for your mailing list in order to help them come back for offers and your latest blog posts. So while Bloom and Thrive Leads are cheaper, we prefer OptinMonster due to the beautiful welcome gate that converts well.
OptinMonster makes it easy for you to capture leads. With options like Monster Links, A/B Testing and Scroll Boxes, OptinMonster makes it easy to remind your readers, again and again, the benefits of signing up for your mailing list.
If you’re on a budget, you won’t go wrong with Thrive Leads. It features a slightly different set of features with the Content Lock and SmartLinks as outstanding ones.
Read : OptinMonster Review
6) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : Thrive Clever Widgets
Thrive Clever Widgets make it to our list as it does something really smart to our WordPress real estate. Unlike normal widgets, Thrive Clever Widgets ensures that your readers will not be exposed to the same widgets on irrelevant content.
Instead, you can display relevant forms, pictures and even call-to-actions using Thrive Clever Widgets. This makes Thrive Clever Widgets a very powerful tool in the arsenal of a content marketer.
And the best thing is, Thrive Clever Widgets comes with a lifetime license.
Read : Thrive Clever Widgets Review
7) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : Social Warfare
If you would like your readers to share your content, the Social Warfare plugin does a great job without sacrificing performance. You see, while most social sharing plugins for WordPress look good, they end up loading a bunch of scripts that slow down your site.
In comparison, Warfare Plugins have created the fastest and really functional plugin in Social Warfare. And it looks good while having all the features you need from a social sharing button. You won’t regret getting a license today.
8) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : Revive Old Posts Pro
Coming in at eighth place is ThemeIsle’s Revive Old Posts Pro. Revive Old Post Pro randomly posting an old post of yours on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook, helping you generate traffic to your old content.
This makes it an effective poor man’s version of the Edgar service, which goes at $49/month. At only $75 per year, Revive Old Post Pro is a steal and worthwhile tool for any content marketer.
9) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : ThirstyAffiliates
After the plugins that help you write better, optimise your headlines and lazily automate the scheduling of social media posts, among others, what else do you need?
Well, if you are new to content marketing, one way to monetise your content is via Affiliate Marketing. And what better plugin to do so than ThirstyAffiliates. We’ve tested Pretty Links Pro and ThirstyAffiliates, and while ThirstyAffiliates is pricier, it comes with great add-ons that go a long way.
Read : Best WordPress Affiliate Link Management Plugins
Plus, ThirstyAffiliates helps you manage your links. This is crucial as your blog keeps growing in content and affiliate links. Once you hit dozens of posts (or hundreds), link management becomes a life-saving feature enabling you to easily update your affiliate links instead of hacking the database for link updates.
Read : The ThirstyAffiliates Review
10) WordPress Plugins For Content Marketing : Leadin
One thing you’ll learn fast in content marketing is to understand your readers. That’s why plugins like Leadin is valuable. With Leadin, you get a detailed report on the readers that sign up for your optin form.
Not only that, you even get to see what they do after signing up for your optin form. So you get to see which content they read and what actions they do after reading that content. And the best thing about Leadin is, it is free.
Read : Best WordPress Plugins To Promote Your Post
Conclusion
Finding the best WordPress plugins for Content Marketing is crucial as it gives you an edge in your writing and conversion. Without these plugins, you probably could get somewhere by writing consistently, but perhaps miss out on the better results that these plugins bring.
Also, while you get hack together similar web apps for your Laravel, Rails or Django blog, why reinvent the wheel? Keeping web apps updated on the blog isn’t worth the time nor resources for most startups. Rather, the price of the plugins is relatively affordable for startups and blogs intending to focus on content marketing.
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