Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically bring more traffic!)
In Part 2, we focus on the setup phase. We explain the best way to start 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 has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the automation system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system with different plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping 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 in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 most likely 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without 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 real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, time, and 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 strategies, sites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites 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 that many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 Two. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, 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 functions.
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 …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social media sites.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options appear in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts will be automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting feature allows your site users to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of third-party 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 tweet, like, or +1 your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to dozens of authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this powerful 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 marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more:
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 Automation Blueprint: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is publish fresh content regularly.
If you need great ideas for posting content on 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 the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading, click on the link below:
***
"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
***