Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you 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 1 of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to begin bringing more web traffic is publish fresh content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We helped you understand 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 two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we will discuss ways to automate traffic to your website with WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two per day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the numbers 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, time, and resources and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites can and will make decisions that affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, 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 Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 marketing channels you should focus more efforts, budget, and time 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 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 recommend staying away from all black hat tools, websites, methods, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is not to game online services or bypass 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 many small business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 shown in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described 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 examples of traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute 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 Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social media sites.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new posts are automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function allows your site users to engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for sharing your content, backlinks, and ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you automatically syndicate your content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to dozens of authority sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article listing many social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here for more information:
The above are just some 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 Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins configured and fully set up, all you have to do to attract more web traffic is publish web content consistently.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with endless content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is explained in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article series, click on the link below:
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"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)
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