Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content on a regular basis to begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses 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 prescribe. If you spent hours checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (the other half of 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 research was done today, the numbers would most likely be 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many business areas to focus on need 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 have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes 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, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and your 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 your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset instead of someone else’s and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated 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 you to avoid using black hat techniques, solutions, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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 business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 website or blog as explained in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones discussed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some plugins that can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress 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 the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social media 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 show in the Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, search-indexable backlinks, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of authority websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, visit this site: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
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 Automation System: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do to start attracting traffic is publish content consistently.
We have created an entire email series aimed at helping you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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