Welcome to Part Four of our Web 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, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add content on a regular basis to start generating new traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We help you understand 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 site, and what to do if your existing site is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of the blueprint.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we will look at ways to automate the traffic system using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spend all of your time checking LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook in addition to researching and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours trying to keep their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
A study of small businesses done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be significantly 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, budgets, and time and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts 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 impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increased availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budgets, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you invest more budget, time, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, 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 Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating your web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset and still benefit from other people’s marketing channels.
Many automated web 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 software, sites, techniques, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Pinterest, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is not to game web 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 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 business owners lack the time, human 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 limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one is very 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 once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) to other blogs and online 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 this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution with plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 loads of useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, 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 …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content to several social accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in your post publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it is automatically distributed online.)
To learn more about using this great plugin, visit this site: Jetpack WordPress Plugin
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a 3rd-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your post. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Kippt, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, go here: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Blueprint: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your site and plugins expertly configured and set up, all you need to do is publish content on a regular basis to automatically start generating new web traffic.
If you need help coming up with great ideas for posting content on your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next article in our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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