Welcome to Part Four of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to grow your business online automatically using WordPress.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part 1 of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your website …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do is post content consistently to automatically generate more traffic!)
In Part 2, we discuss critical setup decisions. We help you understand 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 existing website is built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part 3, we focus on configuring the system.
In this step, we configure hosting settings, WordPress settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure all the settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various plugins that can help drive new visitors automatically to your site.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on who you talk to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two every day (or more) promoting your business on social media.
Most business owners lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts prescribe. If you spent half a day checking Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how would anything else in your business ever get done?
(Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent six or more hours each week on social media (the other half spent even more time – between 6 and 21+ hours per week). This use of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research was conducted today, the figures 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 consumed the most time online.
(Businesses are spending more time 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 leaves even less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other areas …
(Businesses with limited resources, time, and budget and many different business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time marketing and promoting your business on various social websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These companies often will make decisions that can significantly affect your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress website, you can control your own virtual real estate and publish your content automatically to other websites.
Automating systems and process to save time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited budget, resources, and time. For example:
- Which marketing channels should you focus more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. YouTube, Twitter, Pinterest, 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 The Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating the traffic generation 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 online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and your 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 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 urge you to avoid using black hat websites, strategies, solutions, and anything that violates the terms of service and policies of services like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The focus of this article is not to game web services or bypass their terms of service, but to show you how to automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and efforts, and get additional exposure online from sites 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 how many small business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts prescribe. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to different marketing channels one by one can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this strategy 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 sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute content (and comments) 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 of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part 2. Then, get everything configured as described in Part 3. After all 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 Automation System – Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a few WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Post content automatically to social sites and social bookmarking sites
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other sites 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 new content using a WordPress plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many great functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account you set up in Part 3 …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts to several social media accounts.)
After all of the settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings displays in the publishing area.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they are automatically shared online.)
To learn more about this plugin, visit the plugin site: Jetpack
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting system lets your blog readers engage with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature with 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they +1, like, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included at the bottom of their comment when they click submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and web traffic and create more user engagement on your site.)
Go here to learn more about this plugin:
Social LinkMachine
(Social LinkMachine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to drip-feed your content to over 30 online sites, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating websites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to over 30 traffic-generating websites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Diigo, Plurk, Reddit, etc.
- Blogging Platforms: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, YouTube, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article on social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing initiatives. For more details, 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 System: Automated Content Distribution Process – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and configured, all you have to do is publish web content consistently to automatically start attracting traffic organically.
If you need endless content ideas for your web site, we recommend subscribing to our email training series on content marketing here:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is addressed in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section Four
To read the rest of this article series, 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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