Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive new traffic automatically to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part One of this series, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to automating traffic to your site …
(With an expertly configured WordPress web site, all you have to do to drive traffic is add new content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed critical setup decisions. We explained 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 site, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress site on your domain)
In Part Three, we discussed the configuration phase of the blueprint.
Here, we configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we show you how to configure all the settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part 4, you will learn how to set up various plugins that can drive traffic automatically to your site whenever you begin adding fresh content.
Why You Should Automate The Traffic Generation Process
Depending on which business marketing experts you talk to, you could find yourself trying to spend a couple of hours per day (or more) posting content on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts are prescribing. If you spend most of your time posting updates on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how will you get anything else in your business done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small business owners spend their time. Source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Research conducted by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six hours each 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 done today, the numbers would most likely be even higher.
- More than half of all small 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 spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend more time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other vital areas …
(Businesses with limited time, resources, and marketing budget and many areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
One other important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. These companies often will make decisions that affect your business without first consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and post your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time is not new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the dawn of the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the exponential growth online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, budget, and resources. For example:
- Which channels do you focus more of your time, efforts, and budget on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that belong to other companies (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.) while neglecting the benefits of building content on your own domain?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating The Web Traffic Generation With WordPress
What we’d like to share with you now, is a free, simple, and effective method for automating the traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this method, 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should invest more budget, time, 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 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 avoiding black hat tools, sites, strategies, and anything designed to flaunt or violate the terms of service and policies of services like Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not require using black hat methods!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to automate your content distribution so you can 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
As we’ve just seen in the previous section, many small businesses lack the time, human resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that most experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is to be strategic and work smart within your limitations.
So, instead of choosing this approach, which is very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different marketing channels individually can be 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 media sites and 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 site as described in Part 2. Then, get it all configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then automate these processes with plugins such as 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 Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a look now at some examples of WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Post content to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Syndicate comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content to other web properties via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, 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 many great features.
After Jetpack has been installed, you will need to 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 …
(Activate the Publicize feature on Jetpack)
You can share your posts on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Distribute your content to several social networks.)
After configuring all of the account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details show in your publishing area.)
Now, as soon as you publish new content, it will automatically be shared on all of the accounts you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically shared online.)
The Jetpack plugin provides you with a hands-free way to get more exposure online for your content on social websites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress commenting function lets your site users interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions.
You can enhance the WordPress default commenting feature using third-party plugins that integrate with social media, helping to share and spread them online.
For example, a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help attract more comments and create more user engagement on your web site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social reward features like using keywords in the username, adding twitter names to comments, social enticements for content-sharing, and backlinks. 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 the submit button.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and web traffic and improve user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this website to learn more about using this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social Link Machine – Set-and-forget content distribution plugin for WordPress)
Social LinkMachine is a plugin for WordPress that lets you automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – drip-feed your content to dozens of social platforms)
With Social LinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of traffic-generating platforms, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- Document Sharing: e.g. Docdroid, Scribd, etc.
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get useful information about your content marketing efforts), go here to learn more about social media monitoring tools that will help you manage, measure, and analyze your social media marketing campaigns:
The above are just a few examples of the many plugins that WordPress makes available for automating 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: Automated Content Syndication Phase – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to generate traffic is publish content consistently.
If you need help coming up with endless great ideas for posting content on your website, we recommend subscribing to our FREE email training series here:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize as much of the process as can be improved. This step is covered in the next section of our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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