Welcome to Part Four of our Website 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 explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is post fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase. We helped 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 site, and what to do if your website was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the traffic automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we explain how to set up various plugins that can get web traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which business marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending a couple of hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per 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 research was done today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, 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 require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and efforts 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 domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and 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 recommend avoiding black hat tools, techniques, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites that your target audience frequents.
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, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving method 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 marketing channels.
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 explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social accounts.)
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 settings in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter handles to comments, using keywords in the username, social enticements for content-sharing, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
For more information about this great plugin, visit this website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools that you may want to check out. More info:
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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do to automatically begin attracting new traffic is add new content regularly.
If you need endless ideas for posting content on your website or blog, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on content marketing here:
Once you have 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 our series.
This is the end of Section 4
To keep reading, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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