Welcome to Part 4 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 article series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to automatically attract new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring traffic automatically to your website when you begin to post fresh content regularly.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spend all of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 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 use of social media 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 creating 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. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically 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 real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever 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 small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, software, techniques, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to game 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 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 how most 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, resources, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely 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 content one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, configure things as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social networks.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that allows your visitors to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro 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, adding twitter names to comments, social enticements for sharing your content, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to dozens of authority sites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article on social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins configured and set up, all you then have to do to begin attracting new traffic is publish new content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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