Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site 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 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to generate more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which online marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media, as well as running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used social media 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 figures would probably be 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing 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 Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your 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, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat software, sites, strategies, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 2. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes using plugins such as the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media 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 options show in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function lets your blog readers engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the name, adding twitter handles to comments, social enticements for sharing content, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
For more information about the benefits of this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to many online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 social websites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore many social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more information, go here:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to drive more traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the 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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