Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One 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 automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start attracting web traffic is add content consistently!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring new visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which business marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spent hours checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 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 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more efforts, time, 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 the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your 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 websites, solutions, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, configure things as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details displayed in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your post is automatically syndicated online.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a 3rd-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content sharing, and ability to use keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of online websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating sites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
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 comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here for more details:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you have to do to begin attracting web traffic is post new content consistently.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have 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 WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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