Welcome to Part 4 of our Web 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 series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing more traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive visitors automatically to your website just by adding web content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing expert you listen to, you could end up investing a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to 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 planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used social media 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 survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: 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 vital areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. 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 asset? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these 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 neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and time 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 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 recommend avoiding black hat methods, websites, solutions, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach 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:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services 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 WordPress site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins.
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 look now at a few plugins that can:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other websites via RSS
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media sites.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that lets your site users interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this great plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to over 30 online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a detailed article on social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. If you are interested in learning more about this 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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you need to do then is post fresh content consistently to automatically begin bringing more web traffic.
We have created an entire email series aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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