Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is publish web content on a consistent basis to start attracting web traffic!)
In Part Two, we look at the setup phase of the blueprint. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your website has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress website or blog on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this step, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can help get traffic automatically to your site.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation
Depending on who you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you are spending half your day checking Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn in addition to 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. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their time 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.
Research conducted in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (the rest spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would most likely be even 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating business systems and processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited time, marketing budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest 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. 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 Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 channels you should focus more efforts, budget, 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 urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, websites, solutions, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of sites like Google, Pinterest, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing here is not to game online services or flaunt 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 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 small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts recommend. 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 marketing channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) 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 explained in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots with plugins such as the ones listed in the section 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 some examples of traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Post content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your content to various social sites.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options in the publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically distributed online.)
Go here for more details about the benefits of this handy plugin: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting system allows your visitors to interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your web site.)
For more details about this WordPress plugin, visit this site:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that allows you to drip-feed your content to many authority platforms, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed your content to many online websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to many traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
For more details about the benefits of this plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a detailed article listing many social media measurement tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns. Go here for more details:
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: Content Syndication Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to automatically generate more traffic is post new content regularly.
We have created a complete email series designed to help you never run out of content for posting to your website or blog:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To continue reading about this topic, click on the link below:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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