Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site 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 article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to attract new traffic is post fresh content consistently!)
In Part 2, we looked at 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 existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we explain how to set up various plugins that can get new traffic automatically to your website.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend all of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each 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 done today, the numbers would most likely 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 the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
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 exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, budget, 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 ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- 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 method that lets you automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, 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 recommend staying away from all black hat sites, tools, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of services like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is 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 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 small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to services individually 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, configure everything as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate these processes with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other web properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish your 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, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your posts on various social sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in the Publish area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
Visit this website for more information about using this plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your blog readers to engage with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like adding twitter usernames to comments, ability to use keywords in the name, backlinks, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to syndicate content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of online sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), or to learn more about social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about, see this article:
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 Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you need to do to automatically start driving traffic is add web content on a consistent basis.
We have created a complete email training series aimed at helping you never run out of content for posting to your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To keep reading, click on the link below:
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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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