Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1, we provided an overview of the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to generate web traffic is publish fresh content consistently!)
In Part Two, we focus on critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to start if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a site, and what to do if your existing website is built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at configuring the system.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this step, we will look at ways to automate the traffic-getting process using various WordPress plugins.
Why Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing guru you get your advice from, you could find yourself investing an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend. If you were to spend most of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours simply keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and make sales in order to survive.
A study of small businesses conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least six hours per week on social media (the other half of 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 survey was conducted today, the numbers would probably be even 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of 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 equally vital areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many areas to focus on need to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social sites, 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 impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other online accounts.
Investing in automation to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which marketing channels do you focus more time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate your web traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and other marketing channels (e.g. social media),
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, efforts, and your budget on,
- Invest most of your time 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 strongly urge you to avoid using black hat methods, software, websites, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of companies like YouTube, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate online services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen in the previous section that many businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different services one by one can be 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 once, and automate your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 shown in Part 2. Then, configure things as explained in Part Three. After all this is in place, you then automate the process with plugins.
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 quick look at a few traffic-generating WordPress plugins that can:
- Distribute content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content automatically to other online properties via RSS
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (which you would have set up in Part 3.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Configure this section to share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your content on several social media networks.)
After all settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize details displays in your publishing box.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as you publish, your new content will be automatically syndicated online.)
Visit the plugin site to learn more about this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a built-in commenting feature that allows your visitors to interact with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and engage with your content as part of a community.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a third-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for content-sharing, using keywords in the name, backlinks, and the ability to add twitter names to comments. This plugin will visit the comment author’s site while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment when they click the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your site.)
For more details about this WordPress plugin, go here:
SocialLinkMachine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget WordPress plugin that allows you to syndicate and drip-feed your content, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create second-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social Link Machine – syndicate your content to many traffic-generating platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, such as:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Folkd, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogging Platforms: e.g. Livejournal, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Gett, etc.
To learn more about using this plugin, go here: 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 marketing campaigns), we have created a detailed article where we explore over 30 social media measurement tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. Go here for more information:
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: Automated Content Sharing Phase – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you then need to do is publish content regularly to automatically begin attracting more web traffic organically.
We have created a complete email course aimed at helping you come up with limitless content for your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read more, click here:
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