Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish fresh content regularly to drive web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help get web traffic automatically to your website or blog simply by posting fresh content.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat software, websites, strategies, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and web 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 site as shown in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of plugins that can:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displays in the publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system lets your site users engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing your content, using keywords in the name, adding twitter names to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your website.)
For more details about using this WordPress plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of social sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. To learn more, go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating the distribution of your content online.
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 System: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you then have to do is post content on a consistent basis to automatically bring web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you come up with endless content ideas for your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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