Welcome to Part 4 of our Website Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated web traffic machine using the WordPress CMS platform.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website or blog is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress blog, all you have to do is add web content consistently to begin bringing more web traffic!)
In Part Two, we focus on 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 site, and what to do if your website has been built using WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up a WordPress website on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at the configuration phase.
Here, we configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that affect your website’s ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure all the settings that affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part 4, we will show you how to set up various WordPress plugins that can help drive visitors automatically to your website or blog.
Why Automating Your Traffic Generation Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing guru you listen to, you could end up trying to spend an hour or two (or more) per day posting content on social media while also running your business, creating content and managing your web presence.
Many small business owners simply lack the time, resources and budget to employ the services of a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts are prescribing. If you were to spend half a day posting updates on Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter in addition to researching and writing articles for your website or blog, how would anything in your business ever get done?
(Keeping their business running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Source: NFIB)
Many businesses spend most of their working hours simply 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.
A study of small businesses done by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around 6 hours per 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 usage of social media was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same research 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses spend more time every year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic: VerticalResponse.com)
As small businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this puts more and more pressure on businesses to prioritize their time on other areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to consider is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you don’t control. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These companies can and will make decisions that can significantly impact your business without prior notification. Why invest so much effort and time building a business on someone else’s asset? With WordPress, you can control your own virtual real estate and post your content automatically to other sites.
Investing in business automation to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses 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 and business managers, especially for those with limited resources, budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more budget, efforts, and your time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that do not belong to you (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 Traffic Generation With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate the 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 costs,
- Determine which channels you should focus more of your budget, efforts, and time on,
- Invest most of your time and efforts building your own asset instead of someone else’s 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat strategies, websites, tools, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of services like YouTube, Facebook, Google.
(Web traffic automation doesn’t need to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this series of articles is to show you how to be smart with your resources and automate your content distribution in order to leverage your time and marketing efforts, and increase your exposure online to 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 that most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts recommend. What you want to do, then, is work smart within your limited resources, time, and budget.
So, instead of doing this …
(Posting content to services one at a time can be very time-consuming!)
Why not opt for this time-saving method 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 the distribution of your content to all other marketing channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 website or blog as described in Part Two. Then, configure your site settings as shown in Part 3. After all this is in place, you then automate your content distribution using plugins like the ones shown in the next section.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Traffic-Getting Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at a number of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can be used to:
- Syndicate content to social media sites and social bookmarking sites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content via RSS feeds to other online properties
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GooglePlus and more as soon as you publish your content using a plugin like JetPack.
Download URL: https://jetpack.com/
Jetpack is a free WordPress plugin with many useful functions.
After Jetpack has been installed, connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part 3 …
(Connect Jetpack to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Share your posts on several social accounts.)
After configuring all account and plugin settings, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account settings in your post publishing section.)
Now, as soon as you publish a new post, it will automatically get shared online to every account you have set up …
(As soon as new content is published, it will be automatically distributed online.)
This is a hands-free way to create more exposure online for your content on social networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function lets your visitors interact with your website or blog, post new comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a social community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins that integrate your comments with social media, helping to spread and share your content online.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can create more user engagement on your site. The plugin encourages readers to comment using SEO and social rewards like using keywords in the user name, social enticements for sharing content, the ability to add twitter usernames to comments, and search-indexable backlinks. This plugin will visit the comment author’s website or blog while they enter their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv Premium version can attract more comments and visitors and create more user engagement on your web site.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this great plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically syndicate and drip-feed content to dozens of social platforms, build backlinks, include relevant YouTube videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate your content to dozens of online sites)
With Social Link Machine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to over 30 traffic-generating platforms, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Diigo, Kippt, Zotero, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- Document Sharing Platforms: e.g. Docdroid, Gett, etc.
Visit the plugin site to learn more about using this plugin: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media tracking (in order to get actionable information about your content distribution efforts), we have written a comprehensive article about social media measurement tools that are worth knowing about. Go here to learn more about this:
The above are just some 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 Automation Blueprint: Content Distribution Stage – Summary
Once your website and plugins have been expertly configured and set up, all you have to do then is add new content on a regular basis to start driving traffic.
If you need great content ideas for your website or blog, 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 our WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Part Four
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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