Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, 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 website, all you have to do is add great content on a regular basis to automatically start generating traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of this system. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will look at ways to automate traffic to your website using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself spending an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spent all of your time checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would probably 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to focus their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important 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 Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of so many new channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- 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 we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, budget, and your 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat sites, software, methods, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but 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
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 most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of using this time-consuming approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be very time-consuming!)
Why not choose this approach 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, configure things as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your posts to several social sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that lets your visitors engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog 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 Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin website:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate your content to many traffic-generating sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of authority websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site: 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), or to learn more about social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives, see this article:
The above are just some 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 System: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to attract new traffic is post great content consistently.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for your web site:
Once you have 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 Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read the rest of this article series, 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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