Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site 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 series:
In Part 1, we describe 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 blog, all you have to do to start attracting traffic is post great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of the automation blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your website.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could find yourself investing a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spent most of your time posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses 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 make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 done today, the numbers would most likely be 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As 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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets 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 sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, sites, software, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate online services or flaunt 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 websites 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, most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each different marketing channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving strategy 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, 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 great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to 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 on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in the publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your site users interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like ability to use keywords in the username, social enticements for sharing your content, adding twitter handles to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of authority sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
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 written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more info, see this article:
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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to automatically attract new web traffic is post new content consistently.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading about this topic, 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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