Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Site 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 series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to drive more web traffic is add web content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We explain the best way to get started 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 existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation with different plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up spending an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spend hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, 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:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even 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 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 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social media 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 companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
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 lets you automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset 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, sites, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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, many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to marketing channels individually is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this method 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 channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and online 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other websites via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social media networks.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature allows your visitors to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the user name, SEO backlinks, social enticements for sharing content, and the ability to add twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to over 30 online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many online websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. To learn more about this go here:
The above are just a few 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 Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to begin attracting new traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you come up with limitless content for your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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