Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to drive web traffic is publish fresh content consistently!)
In Part 2, we look at critical setup decisions. We explain 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 website was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we look at ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which online marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) promoting your business on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you spent most of your time checking Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours trying to keep 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 conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was conducted today, the figures would most likely be 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more 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 important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budget, and time and many areas to focus on need 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 media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital 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 budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- 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 share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method 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 or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat methods, software, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites visited by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section how many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each marketing channel, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services individually is very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 one-time, and automate the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content to other blogs and online 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 WordPress website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically via RSS to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on various social 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 displays in the publishing section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your content will be automatically distributed online.)
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like the ability to add twitter handles to comments, social enticements for sharing content, search-indexable backlinks, and ability to use keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include at the bottom of their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate content to many authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to many online platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 online sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: 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 efforts), or to learn more about social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns, refer to this article:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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: Automated Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and expertly configured, all you have to do then to begin bringing web traffic is post fresh content regularly.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing here:
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 addressed in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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