Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you 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 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 automatically drive traffic is add new content consistently!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the blueprint. We explained 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process using a number of plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small business owners spend their working hours. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours 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 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the figures 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more time, budget, and efforts 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 the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat sites, software, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 content once, and automate your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 WordPress website as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins like the ones shown in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have 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 on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social media networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in your post publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system allows your site users to engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like social enticements for content sharing, using keywords in the user name, SEO backlinks, and adding twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your website.)
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to automatically syndicate content to many social sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to many online platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many authority platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here 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 (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. More info:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then is post content on a regular basis to automatically start generating new web traffic.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
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