Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically start driving traffic is publish web content regularly!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. 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 site, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) 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 Part 4, we discuss ways to automate traffic to your website using WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending a couple of hours every day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you are spending most of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their time. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their time simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours per 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 conducted today, the figures would probably be significantly higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
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 prioritize their time on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budgets, resources, and time. For example:
- Which channels should you invest more of your budget, time, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have no control over (e.g. YouTube, 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 marketing channels you should invest more efforts, time, and budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 websites, techniques, tools, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of sites like Facebook, Pinterest, Google, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article series is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing 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 in the previous section how most small businesses 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 to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of posting content to individual marketing channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be very 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 content one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 shown in Part Two. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some plugins that can help to:
- Syndicate content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts to several social accounts.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displays in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your site users engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they are typing their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 authority sites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have created a detailed article listing several social media monitoring tools that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that can affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business,etc. More info:
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 Automation Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you have to do then to start attracting traffic is add content regularly.
If you need help coming up with endless great ideas for posting content on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To keep reading this article, click here:
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