Welcome to Part Four of our Website 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 article series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting more web traffic is post web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain 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 website, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation with WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses simply 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 recommend doing. If you spend half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, 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 VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As 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 resources, time, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
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 websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, time, 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 recommend staying away from all black hat tools, websites, strategies, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and 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
We’ve just seen that most small business owners 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each different marketing channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. After all 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 Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 loads of useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details appear in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
To learn more about using this powerful plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content 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 rewards like adding twitter handles to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, social enticements for content sharing, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many social sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this great plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), or if you want to learn more about social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out, refer to this article:
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 System: Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is publish great content consistently to start generating traffic organically.
If you need endless topics for posting content on your web site, then subscribe to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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