Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start attracting traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase. We help you understand the best way to start 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 existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we look at ways to automate your traffic using WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn 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. Source: NFIB)
Many business owners 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 make sales in order to survive.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would probably be even higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many different areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These companies can make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Automating business processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
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 that allows you to automate the 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and your time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat solutions, techniques, sites, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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 businesses lack the time, human resources and budget 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 limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach …
(Posting content to different channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generation plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack 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 Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on various social media accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings appear in your Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Go here to learn more about using this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting function that allows your site users to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for content-sharing, using keywords in the name, search-indexable backlinks, and the ability to add twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this handy plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of authority sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this plugin, visit the plugin site: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. More info:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then need to do is add web content on a regular basis to automatically attract new traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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