I love to test new tools and services, follow case studies and read about the latest craze in the inbound marketing space. In this post I will share some of my findings and thoughts on these, from the most recent weeks. Here goes.

edgar – outsource your social media

I am actually not a fan of social media automation. It is easy to spot and makes social profiles far less attractive, in my opinion. With that being said, I decided to give the latest social media tool a go – Edgar. This tool is somewhat similar to buffer, yet with distinct differences. Edgar allows for easy social media sharing and scheduling, but one thing that really interested me was the way in which Edgar can do it all for you. They will pick certain posts, from my own site and others, and post it to my social media profiles. For some of my sites which I pay less attention to, this is an interesting option. I am, however, yet to see any benefits from this. Up until this point, I have mostly seen a decline in followers, since I started using Edgar. If I am to continue using this, I really need to see a bump in the benefits (considering it comes with a $50/month price tag!)

more social media (semi) automation with jarvis

Another new social media tool, promising to up your social media game with zero efforts – jarvis. More specifically, they tell us that:

Jarvis maximizes your engagement, reach, and social proof with only 15 minutes per month and nearly zero effort.

Right. So, I wanted to give it a go, to see what all the fuzz was about. After signing up, I realized there was no free trial option, and since I already use Edgar, I decided to drop that idea. A few days later, I got an email from the Jarvis team, offering me a 7-day free trial and a link to activate it. Unfortunately, that link took me back to the payment form, and once again, I decided to drop the idea. I told Jarvis folks about this, and then sent me a new new link, but at this point, I didn’t bother anymore. Maybe I will give it a go someday, in the future. If you have played around with this tool, I would love to hear your thoughts on it.

a web-based long tail pro (about time)

One of my favorite tools is apparently being developed as a cloud version too; that’s a good thing. The sad thing is, that long tail pro lifetime platinum members (like… me), seemingly have to pay up – again – in order to use the web version. In addition to this, Long Tail Pro was naturally affected by the recent change in how search volume figures are displayed – and not in a good way. The web-based version might take care of this, but that comes with a price tag (based on the amount of searches you do) – Lot’s of people aren’t exactly pleased with this, and I can understand why.

I will be careful not to say too much about this situation, at this moment, because the short version with long tail pro and all of it’s clients is; complete confusion and current clients are not pleased. The only thing I think is very clear at this stage, is that the communication from the team behind LTP isn’t very good. They have an outdated blog post, and a facebook fan page with selective answers (now with a pinned post with lots of answers); since the change in search volume stats, I haven’t received a single email from the team at LTP.

One aspect that is heavily debated is that LTP Platinum life time clients will have to pay (although, a deeply discounted price), for data on the soon-to-be-released cloud platform for existing clients. Although I do understand the arguments highlighted, it doesn’t look too good, when you recently told the world how to 2x a business.

new potential for kwfinder?

So with news on Long Tail Pro, this might be good news for its competitors like say KWFinder – a tool I have wanted to use for quite some time now now use. It basically does what long tail pro does – its just web based. Surely the difficulty score isn’t calculated in exactly the same manner, and I can’t say which one is more accurate. But for now, KW finder will show you actual search volume figures, which long tail pro won’t. For now, I just wish that KW Finder would use Ahrefs to track the external links – if that was applied, I would be a loyal KW finder client. For now, I will stay on the sideline, and see what happens to LTP. If I have to pay a monthly fee to for LTP, I might give KWFinder a go – specially if the pricing comes close.

update: I recently started using this. Stay tuned for a complete review. ​

add some scarcity with thrive ultimatum

Shane from Thrive Themes has released a new WordPress plugin named Thrive Ultimatum, which is a scarcity plugin. Basically, it enables you to easily add scarcity elements to your landing pages. Neat! We have seen similar plugins in the past, but none of them had the thrive badge and the quality that comes with it – you can put your trust in Shane and his products. Surely this might have some bugs here and there, just like thrive content builder, but nothing that won’t be taken care of, in a near future.

I haven’t tested this plugin personally, as I simply don’t have a need for such a plugin at this stage. If you do, the results speak for themselves. You can see a video demonstration here.

a new alternative to thrive content builder

I have been a loyal user of Thrive Content Builder since day one. Now it surely isn’t perfect, but it is a splendid front end editor – and although it isn’t perfect, the team behind it continues to update it, so it’s just getting better and better. But Thrive Content Builder isn’t the only player in town; before Thrive Content Builder was released, Visual Content Builder had been around for some time, and made a name for itself. Personally, I am not a fan, but lots of people are!

Another new content builder for WordPress is Elementor – I stumbled upon this over at Producthunt the other day, and one thing that sets this apart from the rest is the price which is; free – oh, and in addition to this, is looks like a very well developed tool! Check it out here.

email client clients – pay up!

A while ago, my new favorite email client Nylas N1 went from being a free tool to a paid one (one year free for the loyal beta-testers, whoop!). Just a few days ago, the other new and popular email client Poly Mail, announced they are going down the same route, while continuing to offer a free option as well:

A year ago, we started Polymail with the mission to improve how we work, communicate, and collaborate with email. Today, we’re excited to announce the next big step in our journey – Polymail Pro.Polymail Pro is for the companies and teams who work with email every day, and will bring powerful new features like Message Templates, Mail Merge, and CRM Integration – just to name a few. Polymail Pro will be available as a paid monthly subscription, but we’ll continue to offer a free version of Polymail.We’ll be announcing more details soon, but you can sign up now to get first access and three months free of Polymail Pro!

The other popular email client CloudMagic changed name to Newton, and went from a one-time purchase to a subscription model. Client’s are not pleased!

YoRocket – promising but need improvements​

I have recently played around with this new tool from Brian Dean from Backlinko. It is a very interesting addition to the wordpress plugin scene with a lot of potential. Basically, it allows you to super easily split test your headline and meta description. The plugin also guides you to create headlines and descriptions likely to result in higher CTRs.

The flipside to all this is, that it comes with a monthly recurring subscription of $29! In addition to this, the plugin is still in its infancy with bugs here and there. The good thing is that you can try it for 30 days and if you don’t like it, simply ask for a refund. If this tool was sold as a one-time purchase, I would be a client but for $29/month, I simply cannot justify it. Personally, I think the price is too steep for the majority of wordpress users out there.

But Brian has been up to more than just YoRocket; he recently shared a new post on relaunching old content. A very interesting and detailed read, and something I will be applying on lots of posts, on one of my older sites. Yesterday, Glen from ViperChill shared 13 advanced link building strategies; if you are interested in SEO, this is a must read – just like everything else on viperchill. Jon from AuthorityWebsiteIncome also shared a new post where he guides us through his 5 step Content and SEO Strategy – actionable stuff here. Finally, if you can’t get enough of SEO content, here is a list of SEO dudes to follow.