Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is publish fresh content consistently to automatically begin attracting new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we explain how to set up various plugins that can get visitors automatically to your website or blog simply by publishing fresh content regularly.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media in addition to running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts prescribe. If you spend all of your time posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay 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:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half 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 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.
(Businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As 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 areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Automating business systems and processes to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these 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 you do not own (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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-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 web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your budget, efforts, and your 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 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 you to avoid using black hat websites, tools, strategies, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different channels 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as described in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes using plugins such as the ones discussed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of plugins that can:
- Syndicate content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn 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 useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to 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 account settings appear in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate your content to over 30 online sites, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to dozens of traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate your content to over 30 authority websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this powerful plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing several social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you keep track of online trends, monitor competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that affect your business, etc, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. More info:
The above are just some 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 Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you need to do to automatically bring more traffic is publish great content regularly.
If you need endless ideas for posting content on your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series here:
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 covered in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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