Welcome to Part 4 of our Web 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 series:
In Part One, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add web content regularly to automatically attract 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 website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site was built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic using a number of WordPress plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which business marketing expert you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
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 online marketing experts recommend doing. If you spend half your day posting updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their time. Source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses 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 done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent 6 or more hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed using social media 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 figures would probably be 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 was the activity that consumed the most time online for all businesses surveyed.
(Businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other people (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation Process With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that lets you automate the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 web marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your efforts, budget, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat methods, websites, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as shown in Part Two. Then, expertly configure things as described in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, GooglePlus, 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 many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to 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 on Jetpack)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Distribute your posts automatically to various social media accounts.)
After all of the account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in the Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on every account you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate 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 wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, like, or plus1 your content. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website while they are typing their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included below their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, visit this website:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that allows you to syndicate content, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about the benefits of this great plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article on social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives here:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating the distribution of your content online.
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 Sharing Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you have to do is publish fresh content on a consistent basis to start generating new web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you come up with endless content for your web site:
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 Section 4
To read the rest of this article, click on the link below:
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