Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is publish new content consistently to generate more traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We help 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 website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section, you will learn how to set up various WordPress plugins that can get web traffic automatically to your website or blog when you begin to add new content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you talk to, you could end up spending a couple of hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are advising. If you spent hours checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses 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 remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the other half of businesses surveyed using 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 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and budget and many different areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, 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 often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online properties.
Investing in automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for marketing and promoting a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your efforts, budget, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring 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 method that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more efforts, budget, 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat strategies, sites, software, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing here is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites 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, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like 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 your content distribution to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website or blog as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins like the ones discussed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn 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 installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts automatically on several social sites.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings in your post publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like adding twitter handles to comments, using keywords in the user name, social enticements for sharing content, and SEO backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Visit this site to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate content to dozens of online sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to many social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority sites, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article where we explore a number of social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here for more info:
The above are just a few 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 Automation System: Content Sharing Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins fully set up and expertly configured, all you need to do then to automatically attract traffic is post content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of content for posting to your site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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