Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web 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 series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start driving web traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discussed important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will look at ways to automate your traffic using plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing 1-2 hours or more every day posting content on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many 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 marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending hours posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time keeping 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.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 numbers 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
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, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time 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 website?
- 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 show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic-getting 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and efforts 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 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 sites, methods, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles 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 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, most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to services one at a time, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one at a time is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure your site settings as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots 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 quick look at some traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content on several social media accounts.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options show in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as 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 new posts are automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting function lets your visitors engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for content-sharing, backlinks, using keywords in the name, and adding twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your site.)
For more details about using this handy plugin, visit the plugin website:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 authority sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin: 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), or to learn more about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that could affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc, refer to this article:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then have to do is add content on a consistent basis to attract web traffic.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content ideas for posting to your 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 section of our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading about this topic, 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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