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 platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add web content on a consistent basis to start generating more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of this system. We explained the best way to start 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 existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we will discuss ways to automate traffic to your website with plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you are spending hours checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 done 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.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing 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 time, budget, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend avoiding black hat tools, techniques, sites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is 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 most small businesses 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 work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be very 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and web properties using RSS
- Import content automatically (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 website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great 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 a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media accounts.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in your Publish 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 posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
For more details about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium 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 reward features like using keywords in the username, adding twitter names to comments, social enticements for sharing content, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
For more information about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to many social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to dozens of authority websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing many social media tracking tools that you may want to check out. Go here for more info:
The above are just some 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 System: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to start attracting web traffic is post new content on a regular basis.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, then subscribe to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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