Spokal is a marketing automation software for WordPress users with tools designed to make the process of marketing your business online a lot easier and more fun.
As you connect your WordPress site or social accounts, Spokal’s key features will unlock and in this guide we’ll go through some basics of how to use each tool.
Get started by connecting!
Connecting WordPress
Once you connect WordPress, you will be able to create and publish (or schedule) posts to your site directly from Spokal.
If you’ve just created a Spokal account, click on the ‘Connect Your WordPress Site’ tab or follow the link to ‘Connect Your WordPress Site’ from the Dashboard.
You can choose to connect your site automatically or manually by selecting one of the options and then following the instructions.
Keyword Research (Improve SEO)
Keyword Research helps you find and target keywords that work best for your business. By creating a Keyword Campaign, we will show you how each keyword ranks in google.com (or other country of your choice) and score them to help you decide which keywords would be best to target. Write about the green and yellow and avoid the ones scored in red!
To start the keyword research:
- From your Dashboard go to Research > Keyword Wizard
- Enter a term that people are most likely to search for to find your business
- Remove suggested keywords that don’t relate
- When done, click on Next (at the bottom of the page)
- Click on Create Campaign
Once you create a Keyword Campaign, you will have:
- A real-time SEO analysis in the editor (helps you optimize your post for the keyword you enter and want to target)
- Ranking keywords from your Campaign (see which keywords work best!)
- New keyword suggestions
- Analytics (post performances)
Create posts in Spokal Editor
Spokal editor makes creating content much simpler and faster. With the split section tool to break your paragraphs, formatting your article becomes easier than ever!
You can drag and drop images from Flickr, Tweets, ‘Read More’ tags, Inline CTAs and optimize your post for the search engine by following the SEO tip boxes which will appear once you add a keyword that you want to target.
In the editor, you can also set OpenGraph tags, social media descriptions and enable recurring of the post for automated social shares.
1. Create a New Blog Post
From your Dashboard, click on Create a New Blog Post to open the Spokal editor.
2. Editor – SEO analysis
Once you add a keyword that you want to target, the SEO analysis in the editor will appear to help you optimize your post for the search engine. As you follow the tips, the boxes will turn green to indicate you’re doing a good job!
3. Split your content into paragraphs
With your article written and ready for formatting, select the place where you want to end a paragraph and click on the split section tool from the toolbar at the top of the editor (or from the floating toolbar).
4. Drag and drop images from Flickr
To search for images from Flickr, click on the ‘Flickr’ tab on the right side of the editor. Select the image you want to add by clicking on it and then drag and drop it anywhere you want it to appear in the post.
To open the image editor, click on the pencil icon at the top left of the image.
5. Drag and drop the Inline CTA and ‘Read More’ tag
Same as with the images from Flickr, the Inline CTA and the ‘Read More’ tag can be easily added to your posts by selecting them and dragging anywhere you like in the post.
You can find both the Inline CTA and the ‘Read More’ tag when you click on the ‘+’ tab from the panel on the right side of the editor.
To edit your Inline CTA, simply hover over it when it’s in the post and click on the link at the top right of it.
6. Set Social Media descriptions and OpenGraph tags
- In the editor, click on the Twitter/Facebook icon under the toolbar
- Add meta description, social media descriptions and images
- Click on Done and you’re all set to schedule or publish your post!
Social sharing (the Calendar)
The calendar shows all of your published and scheduled posts along with social shares which you can create and schedule in the calendar in different ways.
With the drag and drop option, you can manually schedule your posts (and curated posts) in the available time slots that you created for your social media accounts. In addition to that, you can create automated social shares so you’re always active on your social media platforms, even if you forget to add content or go on vacation!
You can also create new social shares using the + tab at the top right of the Calendar and pasting a link to the post you want to share.
To get you started on your social media marketing, follow the steps below.
1. Connect your Social Media Accounts
- In Account > Connect Accounts page, you can connect multiple Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn accounts (including business pages and groups!). If you want to publish posts to G+, just connect your Buffer to your G+ page and then to Spokal.
2. Create custom time slots for your social accounts
- From your Dashboard navigate to Social > Schedule Settings
- Enable the social account to set the time slots for it
- Select/unselect days of the week and change the time to when your readers are mostly active
- Save the changes you made
3. Schedule posts manually in the calendar
Now that you have created your custom time slots, you can go to the calendar and start scheduling your and curated posts with a simple drag and drop.
- In the calendar, enable the social account for which you’d like to schedule a post
- Look for the post you’d like to share from the tabs on right side of the calendar
- Select it and drag it into the calendar
NOTE: Even though you’ve set the custom time slots, you can always change the publishing time by clicking on the scheduled item in the calendar. It will open a modal where you can schedule it at a different time or change the social media descriptions.
4. Recurring scheduling (set once and forget):
To set up recurring scheduling for automated shares on your social accounts, you need to enable time slots for which you want to have recurring postings.
To do that:
- Go to Social > Schedule Settings
- Mark the time slots as Recurring to have automated shares of posts that are saved to Recurring Content (these can be your or curated posts)
These time slots will be reserved for any content that you mark as Recurring. Keep reading to see how to save recurring content.
3. Select your Recurring posts
Once you select which posts you want to share recurringly and when, we will schedule them for you so you always have shares on your social media accounts.
1.To save your blog posts to the recurring items queue, go to My Blog Posts page and click on the circular icon next to the post you want to set to recurring. In the popup window, click on the same circular icon to enable it.
2. If you want to enable/disable recurring from within the editor, you can do that by clicking on the Social Media icon under the toolbar and enabling the circular icon.
3. When in Calendar, click on the Feedly tab and then click on the Promote icon next to the post you want to save as recurring. In the popup window, you can set your social media descriptions and disable/enable Recurring.
4. Click on the + tab at the top right of the Calendar and paste the link to the post you want to share. Enable Recurring by clicking on the circular icon at the bottom and Save to Social Tab.
If you’d like to see the list of all Recurring posts or if you want to modify the social media descriptions for these posts, you can find them when you go to Social > Recurring Content.
Lead capturing
There are multiple ways to capture leads using various kinds of CTAs.
Inline CTA
You can add, edit and save the Inline CTA within the editor. It’s located on the right side of the editor under the tab ‘+’.
1. Click on the last tab on the right when in editor
2. Select the CTA and drag it anywhere you want it to appear in the post
3. Click on the link at the top right of the CTA
4. Add your copy, select additional fields, add an image and choose the list where you want to send the leads who sign up using this specific Inline CTA
5. When done, click on Update to save it once or click on Save to Library and use it later
Customize Inline CTA
- From your WordPress Dashboard, click on ‘Spokal’ to open the Spokal Plugin page
- In the CTAs drop down, select ‘Inline CTA’
- Click on the ‘Customize Inline CTA’ button
- Change the color, font styles, text… and save the changes
When you drag and drop the Inline CTA inside the Spokal editor, and edit it with your copy, it will always look on your site as you customized it here.
You can choose between a simple sign up form and the graphic lead generator. Both can be customized and added to your site’s sidebar.
NOTE: The Spokal Graphic Lead Generator Widget is a two-step sign up form, so you need to create a Popup form that you’re going to use when your visitors click on the widget. You can create and customize your Popup from the Spokal plugin page > CTAs > Popups.
How to add the Spokal sidebar widgets:
1. Log in to your WordPress site and go to Appearance > Widgets
2. Choose the Spokal widget you wish to add and select where you want to place it on your site
3. Once it’s added, click on the widget on the right to customize it
CTAs – Scroll Box, Smart Bar and Popups
To add one of these CTAs to your site, you can enable and customize each one from the Spokal plugin page in WordPress.
1. Login to your WordPress site and click on Spokal and then open the CTAs tab
2. Select the CTA that you want to add to your site and once you enable it, click on the Customize button and change the look of the CTA and edit behaviour settings that you want
To set up the behaviour for your Popup, you need to create one first. Once you do, click on the Exit Intent tab under the CTAs menu and add your settings.
Plugins
If you’re using plugins such as Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, Jetpack or Contact Form 7, you can find the settings page for them when you visit the Spokal plugin page and then choose Plugins.
Add a checkmark next to the forms that you want to use for tracking leads in Spokal and the email list where you want to send the leads who sign up using the selected forms.
HTML form for WordPress plugins
If you are using a plugin that accepts HTML forms, you can use the HTML form from the Spokal plugin page. Click on the Plugins menu and then Other. There, you will find a HTML form which you can modify and copy to use it in any WordPress plugin that accepts customized HTML forms (such as SumoMe’s List Builder or OptimizePress).
Lead nurturing
Lead nurturing is handled in Spokal through our integrations with MailChimp and ActiveCampaign.
We chose this route instead of building email into Spokal for 2 reasons:
1. It means existing MailChimp and ActiveCampaign users (and there are millions!) can continue using the lists they’re using, and continue using the software they’re used to.
2. There are dozens of email providers out there – it felt a little like re-inventing the wheel. We’re a small team and felt you’d be better served by leveraging the years of development that has already gone into those products so we can focus on the stuff they can’t do.
Our integrations with both are very deep. If you’re already a MailChimp (MC) or ActiveCampaign (AC) user – you’ll see that we add a couple of new fields to each contact that we track – the Spokal Lead Score, so you can segment based on overall engagement, and the page they signed up on. Not to mention Spokal Focuses which makes both MC and AC much more powerful in terms of segmentation.
ActiveCampaign users – you’ll automatically have the event tracking code installed on your site, so you can start creating advanced flows immediately.
In both cases – connecting them is a simple process that should take no more than a minute or two. Full instructions in the Connect Accounts area for the respective service.
