Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to automatically attract more traffic is add great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on 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 website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase.
In this step, 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 hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can get web traffic automatically to your website when you begin to add web content consistently.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing an hour or more each day posting content on social media.
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 are prescribing. If you are spending half your day checking LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (the other half of 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 research was done today, the numbers would probably be higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budget, and time and many 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 marketing and promoting your business on a number of social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites can make decisions that can significantly impact your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your 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 marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, 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 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, methods, tools, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which can be extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this time-saving approach 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 marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution using plugins like the ones listed in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS to other websites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 many great features.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the Publish section.)
Now, whenever 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 post is automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature lets your visitors interact with your website, post comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like SEO backlinks, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, social enticements for sharing content, and using keywords in the user name. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can include at the bottom of their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to over 30 authority websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this plugin, visit the plugin site: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here to learn more:
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 System: Automated Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then is post web content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your website, then subscribe to our FREE email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading, click here:
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