Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to start generating more web traffic is publish great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can get new visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or more a day posting content on social media while also managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would 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 working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other businesses (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic-getting process 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 urge you to avoid using black hat solutions, sites, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article 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 increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 content one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, configure everything as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts to various social networks.)
After all of the 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 options displays in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function allows your blog readers to engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, ability to use keywords in the user name, and adding twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
For more information about this handy plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: 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 campaigns), go here to learn about social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 System: Automated Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do is post fresh content regularly to automatically begin bringing web traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with ideas for content that you can post on your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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