Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we provide an overview of 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 website or blog, all you have to do is post web content regularly to generate web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website with different WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending half your day posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would probably 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: 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 of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market 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 strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, websites, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using 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 so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of posting content to each channel, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and 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 Two. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on various social media networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your blog readers 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 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like ability to use keywords in the username, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, SEO backlinks, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many online websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about using this 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 marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
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: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is post content regularly to begin bringing web traffic.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you never run out of great content for your website or blog:
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 System series.
This is the end of Section 4
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