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, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new traffic is post new content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 website, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive web traffic automatically to your website whenever you begin adding web content.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time just keeping 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 conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online 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 budgets, time, and resources and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that can significantly affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time 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 online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show 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 web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest 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 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 software, websites, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, get it configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can 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 System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generating plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on various social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in the Publish area.)
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 content is automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that allows your visitors to engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate content to over 30 authority sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more details about this plugin, visit this website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Syndication Process – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is post content consistently to automatically bring more web traffic.
If you need endless topics for content that you can post on your website, then subscribe to our email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
- WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint Part 5 – Discover How To Create An Automated Traffic-Getting Machine
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