Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to bring more web traffic is add fresh content regularly!)
In Part 2, we look at the setup phase of the traffic automation blueprint. We explain 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 website is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help bring web traffic automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which online marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending a couple of hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you spend most of your time checking Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter in addition to researching and 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 business owners 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 make sales in order to survive.
Research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around six hours per week on social media (the rest 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 figures would most likely be higher.
- More than half of all small businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more to create a blog post.
- Finding and posting content for social media consumed the most time online.
(Businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budgets and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more of your time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, 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 Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time 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 recommend staying away from all black hat sites, methods, software, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Twitter, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation does not need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article series is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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, most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, configure things as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other blogs via RSS
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, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social media sites.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options displays in your Publish box.)
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 posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free, automated way to get more exposure for your content online on social media websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that lets your site users interact with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments 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 +1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
For more details about the benefits of using this plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed your content to dozens of authority platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
For more information about this WordPress plugin, visit this website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article listing a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. For more details, go here:
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 Automation Blueprint: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and configured, all you need to do then is post content on a consistent basis to automatically begin attracting more traffic organically.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content ideas for posting to your website:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading this article, click on the link below:
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