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.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post great content on a regular basis to automatically start generating more web traffic!)
In Part 2, we focused on critical setup decisions. 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 website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation with different plugins.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spent half a day posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow 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 businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (most of the other 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small 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.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small 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 equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth 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 budget. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more 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 ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, software, websites, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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 business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels can be extremely 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and web 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 described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with 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 quick look at a number of plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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 installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in the publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature lets your site users interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or +1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit this site to learn more about this powerful plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate your content to dozens of authority websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to many traffic-generating sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin, visit this site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore several social media measurement tools that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business,etc. More information:
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 Automation System: Automated Content Distribution Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been set up and configured, all you need to do is publish fresh content regularly to automatically attract traffic organically.
If you need help coming up with unlimited great ideas for content that you can post on your website, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series here:
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 Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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