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, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically generate traffic is post great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We helped 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 website, and what to do if your existing website was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we looked at important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we explain how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive web traffic automatically to your site.
Why Automate Your Traffic Generation Process?
Depending on which expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours each day (or more) promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your web presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are recommending. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Twitter in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
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 stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six 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 conducted 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 are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: 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 marketing budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies often will make decisions that impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in business automation to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more time, efforts, 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 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 Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website or blog and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts 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 urge you to avoid using black hat software, websites, strategies, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of companies like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t require the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is not to game online services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites frequented by your target audience.
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 many online experts are prescribing. 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 individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy like the one shown below 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media services and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you can then automate your content distribution using plugins like the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some examples of WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn and more as soon as you publish your 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 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to several social networks.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options displayed in the publishing section.)
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 syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The built-in WordPress commenting feature allows your visitors to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of an online community.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with a number of third-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your post. 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 submit.
(CommentLuv Pro version can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to dozens of online sites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of online sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Kippt, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Xing, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
Go here to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution campaigns), we have written a comprehensive article listing a number of social media tracking tools that will help you identify new business opportunities, track competitor activity, see what conversations are taking place online that can affect your business,etc. 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: Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been fully set up and configured, all you then need to do is post content consistently to automatically bring more traffic.
If you need endless topics for posting content on your website or blog, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is addressed in the next section of our series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click here:
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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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