Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your site using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One of this series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically start generating traffic is publish great content regularly!)
In Part Two, we discuss critical setup decisions. We help you understand the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your existing site is built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part Three, we focused on the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that can affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In this article, we look at ways to automate the traffic system using WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Automate Your Traffic-Getting Process
Depending on which business marketing experts you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend an hour or more a day promoting your business on social media.
Many business owners lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend hours checking Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your blog or website, how can anything in your business get done?
(Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and make sales in order to survive.
Research done in 2012 by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- Almost half of all small businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours each week on social media (most of the other businesses surveyed that used social media 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 done today, the figures would most likely 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic 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 important areas …
(Businesses with limited time, budget, and resources 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 media websites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of many new channels for promoting and marketing a business creates a number of dilemmas for business owners and business managers, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you invest more of your time, budget, and efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while ignoring your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective method that allows you to automate the traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, you will be able to:
- Save time creating content for your website and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, time, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your efforts building your own asset 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 urge that you stay away from all black hat sites, strategies, solutions, and anything designed to “game” or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution so you can leverage your time and 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 in the previous section that many small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts are prescribing. 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 channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not use a smarter, time-saving strategy like 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 your content distribution to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social channels and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute content (and comments) automatically 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress site as shown in Part Two. Then, get it configured as explained in Part 3. Once all of this is in place, you then automate the process using plugins like the ones listed below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at a number of plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google+, LinkedIn 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 functions.
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 a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Share your posts on several social networks.)
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 details show in your post publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as posts are published, they will be automatically syndicated online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to get more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting function that lets your visitors interact with your site, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress built-in commenting feature with a 3rd-party commenting plugin that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content online.
For example, using a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like social enticements for sharing content, using keywords in the name, the ability to add twitter names to comments, and backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they type their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and create more user engagement on your site.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this handy plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
SocialLinkMachine is a set-and-forget plugin that lets you drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to over 30 traffic-generating sites)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed your content to over 30 social platforms, such as:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, Tribe, etc.
- Social Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Sendspace, etc.
Go here to learn more about this great plugin: SocialLinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (so you can get useful information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article listing a number of social media tracking tools and technologies that are worth knowing about. More information:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating and sharing 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 Automation System: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your WordPress site and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you then have to do is post fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting new traffic.
We have created an entire email training series designed to help you never run out of content for posting to your website:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is explained in the next section of the series.
This is the end of Part 4
To read more, click on the link below:
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