Welcome to Part Four of our WordPress Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we provide an overview of the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do is post web content on a regular basis to automatically drive traffic!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We helped you understand the best way to start 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 site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(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 this step, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your website or blog whenever you begin to post content.
Why It Makes Sense To Automate Your Traffic Generation
Depending on which business marketing guru you talk to, you could end up investing an hour or two (or more) every day promoting your business on social media in addition to managing your business, your content and your online presence.
Many businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you are spending all of your time checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing articles for your blog or website, how does anything in your business get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- Almost half of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures would probably be even 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 each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing in order to compete and survive, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and marketing budgets and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on a number of social websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These companies can and will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much effort and time building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Investing in business automation to leverage time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth channels for promoting and marketing a business online creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited budget, time, and resources. For example:
- Which of these channels should you focus more of your budget, efforts, and time 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 market and promote your business on?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula that allows you to automate the traffic generation with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and efforts 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat solutions, methods, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like Facebook, Google, Twitter, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article series is not to game web 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 efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites used by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, time, and resources.
So, instead of posting content to different marketing channels, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not use this time-saving approach 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:
- Automatically distribute content 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 get all this done?
Simple … first, set up your website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, expertly configure it as shown in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate various processes using plugins like the ones discussed in the section below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic System – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a few plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content automatically to other online properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack WordPress Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ 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 features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you 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 …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account options appear in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your posts are automatically syndicated online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function lets your blog readers interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and engage with your content.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they plus1, tweet, 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 can be included below their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website.)
Go here to learn more about this great plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you syndicate your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to dozens of authority websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of online sites, including:
- Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Plurk, Stumbleupon, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (so you can get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article listing many social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. More information:
The above are just some examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and syndicating 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 Sharing Process – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and set up, all you then need to do to attract more traffic is add great content on a consistent basis.
We have created an entire email course designed to help you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in our WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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