Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you 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 explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to begin bringing web traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. 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 existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of this blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you spent all of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping 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.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the numbers 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your budget, efforts, and your time 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, strategies, websites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used by your target audience.
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 advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to services one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving strategy 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate various processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, 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 loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social media networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about using this plugin: Jetpack Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your blog readers to engage with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your content. 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 below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to over 30 online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. 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 Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is add fresh content regularly to automatically generate more traffic organically.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
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 explained in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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