Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this 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 automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to drive more traffic is publish content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we look at critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to start 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) 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 get new visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you spend all of your time checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales 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 six or more hours per week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various 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 companies often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, sites, strategies, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites frequented 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 small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part 3. 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 Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your posts to various social networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed 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 content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this website for more details about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, go here: 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 efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore many social media measurement tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business, etc, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. 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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post content on a consistent basis to attract new web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading, 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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