Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to attract traffic is post content on a regular basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained 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 site has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.
In this step, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the article series, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can bring traffic automatically to your site as you begin to post new content on a regular basis.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which experts you get your advice from, you could find yourself trying to spend 1-2 hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend. If you are spending most of your time posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how does anything in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping 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.
Research conducted by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was done today, the numbers would probably be significantly 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 spend more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time and many different areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time 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 Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating business processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for business owners, especially for those with limited marketing budgets, time, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more budget, time, and efforts 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 the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your time, efforts, and budget 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 techniques, sites, tools, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of sites like Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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, many business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limited resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one 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 content 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 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 site as explained in Part Two. Then, get it configured as described in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected 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, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content automatically to several social sites.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options appear in the publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new posts are published, they are automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system allows your blog readers to engage with your website, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature with a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can create more user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, adding twitter names to comments, ability to use keywords in the username, and social enticements for content-sharing. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this site to learn more about using this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 authority platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate content to dozens of authority sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many online platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tumblr, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media tracking tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then is post great content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting more web traffic.
If you need endless content ideas for your site, we recommend subscribing to our email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
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 our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read more, click on the link below:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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