Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically bring more traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate the traffic-getting process using a number of plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend all of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours 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.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using social media 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 conducted today, the figures 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
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 areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. Facebook, 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 Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 sites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series 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 get additional exposure online from websites 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, most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. 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 can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually is 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, get it configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social media sites.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your site users engage with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like ability to use keywords in the name, backlinks, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, and social enticements for content sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate content to over 30 online websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed your content to many online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this powerful plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. To learn more, visit this page:
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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you then need to do is publish web content on a regular basis to drive more traffic organically.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with unlimited content ideas for your website or blog:
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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading this article, click here:
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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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