Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to bring web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spend most of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated web traffic solutions tend to focus on black hat methods, such as manipulating search engine results. This is not what the focus of this article series is about. In fact, we urge that you stay away from all black hat websites, tools, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this approach instead …
(Set up an automated content distribution, lead and traffic generation, and sales and marketing system with WordPress)
With an expertly configured WordPress site, you can build more than just a website for your business … you can set up an automated traffic and lead generation and sales & marketing system, where all you do is publish your content and WordPress then automates the rest.
With WordPress, you can publish content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online properties using RSS
- Automatically import content (e.g. videos)
As your business evolves, you can add more functionality and automate processes like:
- Sell products and services with e-commerce,
- Capture leads with opt-in forms and add your subscribers to newsletters and autoresponders,
- Allow visitors to register on your site with different membership levels,
- And so much more!
You can do all of this using inexpensive WordPress plugins. Once these plugins are installed and configured on your site, just direct your visitors to the appropriate sections (e.g. your store, subscription forms, membership area, etc.)
How do you do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the process with plugins like the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about using this great plugin, visit the plugin website: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your site users to engage with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you syndicate your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content to over 30 online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this site to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing many social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. For more details, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
Kickstart Your WordPress Traffic System
After your traffic automation system has been set up, we recommend kickstarting the process of driving traffic to your site with the steps shown in this tutorial:
WordPress Traffic Automation System: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically begin bringing web traffic is add great content regularly.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you come up with endless content for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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