Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress 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 1 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 is publish web content regularly to automatically drive more traffic!)
In Part Two, we discuss the setup phase of the traffic automation process. 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 is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase of the automation blueprint.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help bring traffic automatically to your website.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on who you listen to, you could end up investing 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Keeping a business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small 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 remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed that used social media 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 conducted 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)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, marketing budget, and resources and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business processes to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget 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 recommend avoiding black hat websites, tools, techniques, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Twitter, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but 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 websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different services one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this method 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure your site settings as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins such as the ones shown in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few WordPress plugins that can:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of useful features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part Three.) …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media sites.)
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 options displays in the Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting system that lets your visitors engage with your web site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of third-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, tweet, or plus1 your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit this website:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 online websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin site for more details about using this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn about social media monitoring tools and technologies that you may want to check out:
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 Automation Blueprint: Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically start generating more traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading this article, click here:
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