Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish new content on a consistent basis to attract new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate the traffic-generation process with different WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours every day (or more) posting content on social media, as well as trying to manage your business, your content and your web presence.
Most business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spend hours posting updates on Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to planning and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours each week on social media (the rest 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 research was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even 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 their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budgets and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going 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 can dramatically impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in automation to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy 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 online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more budget, efforts, and time 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 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, strategies, tools, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, configure it as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes using plugins such as the ones discussed in the following section.
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 look now at some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 many useful features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social networks.)
After all plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details in your publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
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 like, tweet, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating platforms, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to dozens of authority platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about the benefits of this handy plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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: Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you need to do is add great content consistently to automatically begin attracting web traffic.
If you need help coming up with endless great ideas for posting content on your website, then subscribe 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 covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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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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