Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One of this article series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do to begin attracting web traffic is add content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase of this blueprint. We explained the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of this system.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the article series, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic system using plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing guru you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you were to spend hours checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (the rest 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 done today, the figures would probably 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 are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various 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 significantly affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process 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 Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels should you focus more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other businesses (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 Generation Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more budget, time, and efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 recommend staying away from all black hat strategies, websites, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, YouTube, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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 businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to marketing channels individually, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving approach 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can 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 Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other blogs via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content on various social media sites.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options in your post publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
For more details about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your site users to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the user name, search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for content-sharing, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many online platforms, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many social sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more about this go here:
The above are just some 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 System: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been configured and set up, all you need to do to automatically start generating new traffic is add fresh content consistently.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you come up with endless content for your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click here:
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