Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish content on a consistent basis to automatically attract more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss the setup phase. We explain the best way to start if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at the configuration phase of the automation process.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation with different WordPress plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up spending an hour each day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many business owners spend most of their working hours just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow 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 6 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 conducted today, the numbers would most likely be even 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.
(Small businesses spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These sites can and will make decisions that impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process 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 exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels do you focus more efforts, time, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more time, efforts, and your budget 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 urge you to avoid using black hat techniques, sites, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to 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
We’ve just seen that most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels can be 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 the distribution of your content to all other channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social media 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you can then automate the content distribution using plugins such as the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, 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 the WordPress.com account you set up in Part Three …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, 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 settings in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this handy plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting feature allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of an online community.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party commenting plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share them around.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, tweet, or like your post. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
To learn more about using this plugin, go here:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed content to over 30 online websites, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content automatically to many social platforms)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 social websites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Diigo, Instapaper, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that are worth checking out and knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some 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: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins configured and set up, all you have to do then is add great content on a consistent basis to automatically generate traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course designed to help you come up with limitless content for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is addressed in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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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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