Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin bringing more traffic is publish great content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. 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 how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your website or blog as you begin posting new content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which business marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend all of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales 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 around six hours each week on social media (the other half 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 research was done today, the figures would probably be 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.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 focus more of your efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your efforts 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 websites, techniques, software, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites frequented 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 businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels is very 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as explained in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins like the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other online 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on various social sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in the post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
For more details about this plugin, visit this website: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your site users interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a 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 the ability to add twitter handles to comments, social enticements for content-sharing, SEO backlinks, and using keywords in the name. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
For more details about the benefits of this handy plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here to learn more:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do is publish new content regularly to bring web traffic.
We have created an entire email series aimed at helping you come up with endless content ideas for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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