Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this series:
In Part One of this article series, we explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to begin attracting web traffic is post fresh content on a consistent basis!)
In Part Two, we look at critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set things up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part Three, we focus on important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you learn how to configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help bring visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which experts you talk to, you could find yourself spending an hour or more each day posting content on social media.
Many small business owners lack the time, human resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise doing. If you were to spend half a day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your website or blog, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping their business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Image source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours just 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 done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours each 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 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budget and many different business areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on a number of social websites, all of your efforts are going 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 affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating systems and process to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more time, efforts, and your budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting 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 The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, 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 costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more efforts, time, and your budget 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 recommend staying away from all black hat websites, tools, strategies, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, Twitter, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not need to involve the use of black hat methods!)
The focus of this article is not to manipulate online services or break their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to sites used by your target audience.
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 online experts recommend doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one at a time is 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 content once, and automate the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as shown in Part 2. Then, expertly configure it as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate the content distribution with plugins such as the ones shown 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 brief look at a number of WordPress plugins that can:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other sites via RSS feeds
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (set up in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your content automatically on various social networks.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displayed in your publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting feature allows your blog readers to interact with your site, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a number of 3rd-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your post. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and create more user engagement on your website.)
For more details about using this great plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 social sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content to many authority platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to dozens of social websites, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blog.com, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
To learn more about this powerful plugin, visit the plugin website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article where we explore a number of social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. 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 Blueprint: Content Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you then need to do to automatically begin attracting more traffic is publish great content on a regular basis.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, then subscribe to our FREE email training course on growing your business with content marketing here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as you can. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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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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