Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you 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, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to start attracting traffic is post web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the traffic automation system. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence 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 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used 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 done today, the figures would probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media 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 LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without requiring your input. 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 real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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 I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat methods, software, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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, most 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 budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to different services one at a time, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy like this 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 services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate various processes using 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 Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other blogs via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 many useful functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your Publish box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter names to comments, social enticements for content sharing, search-indexable backlinks, and using keywords in the username. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this powerful plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 online websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools and technologies that you may want to check out. Go here to learn more:
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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do then to begin bringing traffic is post new content on a regular basis.
If you need great content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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