Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site 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 of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is post web content on a consistent basis to start driving web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We help you understand the best way to start 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 existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at configuring the system.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we look at ways to automate traffic generation with plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up spending a couple of hours each day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most businesses lack the time, resources and financial means 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 recommend. If you spent half a day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time 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. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the other half 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 numbers would most likely be significantly 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts 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 recommend staying away from all black hat strategies, software, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and 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, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can help:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on various social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account 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, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the name, the ability to add twitter names to comments, backlinks, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a 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 …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to over 30 social sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of social sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. More information:
The above are just some 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 Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add web content regularly to start generating more web traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***