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 platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically bring traffic is post content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of the automation system. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help bring new visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more a day posting content on social media.
Most businesses 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 online marketing experts recommend. If you spent hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours 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 done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: 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 important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many different 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these channels do 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 promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 strongly recommend staying away from all black hat software, websites, methods, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one is very time-consuming!)
Why not do this 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate various processes with plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting system that lets your blog readers engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, using keywords in the user name, social enticements for content sharing, and adding twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many social platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin website: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that could affect your business,etc. Go here to learn more:
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 Blueprint: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and set up, all you have to do to automatically start generating more web traffic is post content consistently.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly 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 Part Four
To read more, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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