Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website 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 article series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is post new content on a regular basis to automatically bring traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of the traffic automation process.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate traffic generation using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which expert you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours or more every day promoting your business on social media while also trying to run your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you spend half your day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent 6 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 research was done today, the figures would probably be significantly 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.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in automation to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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 method that lets you automate your traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 marketing channels you should focus more efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat software, methods, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, YouTube, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from 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, many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, budget, and resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other websites
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of great functions.
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.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in the Publish section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Pro version can attract more comments and visitors and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of online websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this handy plugin, visit the plugin site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here for more info:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Stage – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is add great content consistently to begin bringing web traffic organically.
If you need great content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading this article, click here:
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***