Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is add content consistently to automatically attract more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on 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 everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website with different plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which online marketing gurus you get your advice from, you could end up spending 1-2 hours or more per day posting content on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you spent hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 conducted today, the figures would most likely 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more budget, time, and efforts 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, 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 The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated 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 avoiding black hat tools, strategies, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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
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 advise doing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this time-saving strategy 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution using plugins like the ones listed in the next 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 brief look at some examples of traffic-generation plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, 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 installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media accounts.)
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 settings displayed in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your site users to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here to learn more:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to automatically generate web traffic is add great content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content for posting to your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, 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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