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, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically start generating new web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focused on the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three we explain how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this section of the series, we will look at ways to automate traffic generation using plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which business marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour every day (or more) posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you spend most of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners 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 grow 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 six or more 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 done today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites often will make decisions that affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
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 channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts 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 strongly urge that you stay away from all black hat websites, tools, techniques, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving strategy 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 services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, expertly configure everything as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins such as 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 Blueprint – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites via RSS feeds
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 great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social networks.)
After configuring all plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details show in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically syndicated online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like backlinks, social enticements for sharing your content, using keywords in the name, and adding twitter handles to comments. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
For more details about the benefits of using this great plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 authority websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this site: Social Link Machine
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 written a comprehensive article listing a number of social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, go here:
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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your site and plugins have been set up and configured, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic.
We have created a complete email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, 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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