Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to automatically attract traffic is post content consistently!)
In Part 2, 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on configuring WordPress.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we look at ways to automate your traffic with different plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending most of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per 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 conducted today, the figures would most likely be significantly 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.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many different business 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 promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites can make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus 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. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, efforts, and budget 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 recommend staying away from all black hat techniques, websites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
The focus of this article series is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means 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 limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time is very time-consuming!)
Why not use 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 bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as explained in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution using plugins such as the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack 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, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social sites.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings appear in the publishing area.)
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 posts are published, they will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that allows your visitors to interact with your web site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the username, the ability to add twitter names to comments, backlinks, and social enticements for sharing content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit this website to learn more about using this great plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate your content to over 30 online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many traffic-generating sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about here:
The above are just a few 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you then need to do to automatically bring web traffic is add great content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email training series designed to help you never run out of content ideas for your web site:
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 WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading about this topic, 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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