Welcome to Part Four of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website or blog, all you have to do to automatically start driving traffic is add content regularly!)
In Part Two, we looked at critical setup decisions. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we focused on the configuration phase of this blueprint.
Here, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you will configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability)
In this article, we explain how to set up various plugins that can help drive web traffic automatically to your site.
Contents
Why Automating The Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you get your advice from, you could find yourself spending 1-2 hours every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you are spending half your day checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how can anything else in your business get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Many business owners spend most of their time trying to keep their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales 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 six hours per week on social media (the other half 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 done today, the numbers would probably be higher.
- More than half of all small 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 are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Image source: VerticalResponse.com)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time marketing and promoting themselves online as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other 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 have no control over. You don’t own Facebook, Twitter, or StumbleUpon. These sites often will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior warning. Why invest so much effort and time building content on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to save time is nothing new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the exponential growth marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, time, and budget. For example:
- Which of these channels should you invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to promote and market your business on?
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 that lets you automate your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 web marketing channels,
- Determine which channels you should invest more efforts, budget, and your time 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 techniques, websites, solutions, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the policies and terms of service of services like LinkedIn, Facebook, Google.
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and get additional exposure online from websites that your target audience frequents.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that many businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose a smarter, time-saving approach like the one shown below 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 services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically to other blogs and online 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 described in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as explained in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate various processes using plugins.
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 quick look at some traffic-generating plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content via RSS feeds to other sites
Jetpack Plugin
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 WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with loads of great features.
After installing Jetpack, connect the plugin to your WordPress.com account (as described in Part Three.) …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate the Publicize feature …
(Jetpack plugin – Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to various social accounts.)
After configuring all of the plugin and account settings, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize settings displayed in your Publish section.)
Now, whenever you publish new content, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
Jetpack provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The native WordPress commenting function allows your site users to interact with your site, post new comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress built-in commenting feature using a 3rd-party plugin that integrates your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your blog more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they enter their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can help attract more comments and traffic and create more user engagement on your web site.)
For more details about the benefits of using this WordPress plugin, visit the plugin site:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed your content, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and create 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of authority sites, including:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Instapaper, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Livejournal, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about using this great plugin, visit this website: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media monitoring tools and technologies that will help you identify new trends and opportunities, track competitor activity, see what online conversations are taking place that affect your business,etc. To learn more about this go here:
The above are just a few examples of the many content distribution plugins that WordPress makes available.
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 Automation System: Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically attract web traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
We have created a complete email series aimed at helping you come up with limitless content for posting to your website:
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 the series.
This is the end of Section 4
To read the rest of this article series, click here:
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