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 article 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 site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically start generating web traffic is publish content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed 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 existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can 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 site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we look at ways to automate your traffic with different plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spend hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per week on social media (the rest 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 done 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 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 source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 budget, resources, and time and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, 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 companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your 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 recommend avoiding black hat tools, strategies, websites, 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 have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not choose 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other 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
- 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 site as shown in Part 2. Then, configure it as explained 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 System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social networks.)
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 settings displayed in the post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the user name, the ability to add twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content-sharing, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more info, see this article:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add web content regularly to automatically begin bringing more web traffic.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with unlimited content for your website:
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 section of our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
- Web Site Traffic Blueprint Part Five – A Complete Guide To Increasing Your Web Traffic Automatically
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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