Welcome to Part 4 of our WordPress Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is publish web content regularly to automatically start generating more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we look at important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, internal and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we will discuss ways to automate your traffic using various plugins.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which marketing gurus you listen to, you could find yourself trying to spend an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media while also trying to manage your business, your content and your online presence.
Many small businesses simply lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts advise doing. If you spent hours posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: NFIB)
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.
Marketing research done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 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 higher.
- More than half of all businesses surveyed spent 1-3 hours or more creating 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing 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, budgets, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social 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 YouTube. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to save time is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, resources, and budget. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more time, budget, 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 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 Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that lets you automate the traffic generation process 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 channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your efforts, time, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly recommend staying away from all black hat sites, tools, techniques, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Google, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The purpose of this article is not to game online services or break their terms of service, but 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 increase your exposure online to sites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most small 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 budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of using this approach …
(Posting content to different marketing channels is 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social services and social bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can help:
- Distribute content to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, 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 many great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social accounts.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize options show in the Publish area.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically be shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it is automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this plugin, go here: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress built-in commenting feature allows your site users to engage with your web site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with third-party commenting plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can improve user engagement on your website. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like search-indexable backlinks, social enticements for content sharing, ability to use keywords in the name, and the ability to add twitter usernames to comments. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your site.)
To learn more about the benefits of this WordPress plugin, go here:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that lets you syndicate your content to many authority sites, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate and drip-feed content automatically to many traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Overblog, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: 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 marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. For more details, visit this page:
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: Automated Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and fully set up, all you then have to do to drive more traffic is add fresh content on a regular basis.
If you need help coming up with endless topics for content that you can post on your website, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on growing your business online with content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section Four
To keep reading this article, click on the link below:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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