Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. 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 has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can drive new traffic automatically to your website.
Why You Should Consider Automating The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you spend hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 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 conducted today, the figures would probably be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
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 focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many 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 social media 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 StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not control (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your web traffic generation process 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and 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 recommend avoiding black hat techniques, software, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Pinterest, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is not to game 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 efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each channel, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually can be very 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
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 quick look at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, 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 many great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media accounts.)
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 details in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
For more details about the benefits of this handy plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your blog readers engage with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share 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 choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many social websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. To learn more, visit this page:
The above are just a few 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: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and set up, all you then have to do is publish new content on a regular basis to attract more traffic.
If you need endless ideas for content that you can post on your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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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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