Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post content on a consistent basis to begin attracting traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the automation blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are advising. If you spent half a day posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the figures would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, and efforts 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, sites, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social media sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in the publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content sharing, ability to use keywords in the name, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to over 30 social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here for more details about the benefits of this handy plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn about social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins fully set up and configured, all you have to do then to automatically begin attracting traffic is add content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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