Welcome to Part 4 of our Website 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 series:
In Part One of this series, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically begin attracting new traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we looked at the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using various plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing experts you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours or more per day promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would probably 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 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 small 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 focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time 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 often will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is not 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 business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these 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 do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more budget, time, and your efforts 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 urge you to avoid using black hat methods, software, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually can be very time-consuming!)
Why not use this approach 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and web 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure everything as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones listed in the following section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically via RSS to other web properties
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social media sites.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in the post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function allows your site users to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit the plugin site for more details about this handy plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content automatically to dozens of authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more information, visit this page:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is add fresh content on a regular basis to begin bringing more web traffic organically.
If you need great ideas for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our email training course 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 covered in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***