Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin attracting traffic is post web content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the blueprint. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can bring web traffic automatically to your site.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing gurus you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour a day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spend all of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Image source: NFIB)
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 stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 numbers would most likely 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is not 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 and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, 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 Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat techniques, solutions, websites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
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, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to services individually, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 as described in Part Two. Then, configure it as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn 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 many great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social media accounts.)
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 account options displayed in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors engage with your site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using 3rd-party commenting plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like SEO backlinks, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for content sharing, and ability to use keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
For more details about this great plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content to dozens of online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
For more details about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out here:
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 System: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to automatically attract traffic is publish content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your website:
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 Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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