Welcome to Part Four of our Web 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 One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish new content on a regular basis to drive traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything 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 WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring new traffic automatically to your website or blog as you begin adding fresh content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spent half a day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small 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 numbers would probably be 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going 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 prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more efforts, budget, and time 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 domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, time, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat websites, tools, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites used 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 business owners lack the time, resources and financial means 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 resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 site as described in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins like 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 Automation Blueprint – Traffic-Getting 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
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content is automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, visit this site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article listing over 30 social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. To learn more, go here:
The above are just some 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: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do is add content consistently to begin attracting new web traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with great topics for content that you can post on your web site, we recommend subscribing 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 process. This step is explained in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
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