Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically generate more web traffic is add new content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase of this system. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using a number of plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise. If you spent hours checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the numbers would most likely be 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, time, and resources and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budget. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more of your budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the 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 marketing channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 staying away from all black hat software, strategies, sites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to different channels, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 content one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, get it configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, 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 features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social networks.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the Publish box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they plus1, like, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate content to over 30 online websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content to dozens of social platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many authority sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here: 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 distribution efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement 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 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 Blueprint: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do to bring more traffic is post great content on a consistent basis.
If you need endless great ideas for content that you can post on your website or blog, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading, click here:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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