Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site 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 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post new content regularly to begin bringing more traffic!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of this process.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help get traffic automatically to your website or blog simply by publishing fresh content on a consistent basis.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which online marketing guru you talk to, you could end up spending an hour or more every day promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you were to spend hours checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales 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 small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would probably be even 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of 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 LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website 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 of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time building your own asset 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 urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, sites, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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 that many business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for 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 comments and content 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, configure things as shown 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 Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn 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 many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social accounts.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically syndicated online.)
Visit this site to learn more about this great plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function allows your visitors to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the username, adding twitter usernames to comments, backlinks, and social enticements for sharing your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content to many authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – drip-feed content to over 30 online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to many social platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here for more details about using this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools that are worth knowing about. For more information, go 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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do to start generating more traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course designed to help you never run out of content for posting to your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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