Welcome to Part Four of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to automate traffic to your website using the WordPress CMS.
So far, we have covered the following in this article series:
In Part One, we described the traffic automation process, and explained why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is add great content on a regular basis!)
In Part Two, we focused on 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 website, and what to do if your existing site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up WordPress on your domain)
In Part 3, we look at configuring WordPress.
In this step, we configure all the settings that affect your website’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 you learn how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your site’s ability to generate traffic automatically)
In Part Four, we discuss ways to automate traffic generation using a number of plugins.
Why Automating The Traffic-Getting Process Makes Sense
Depending on which marketing expert you get your advice from, you could end up trying to spend a couple of hours or more each day posting content on social media, as well as trying to run your business, creating content and managing your online presence.
Most small business owners simply lack the time, resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many marketing experts recommend doing. If you spent half a day checking LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook in addition to researching and writing articles for your blog or website, how would you get anything in your business done?
(Keeping a business up and running is how most small businesses spend their working hours. Infographic source: NFIB)
Small businesses spend most of their time keeping 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.
Research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent around six 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 done today, the figures would probably be significantly 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 consumed the most time online.
(Small businesses are spending more time marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time on online marketing as a matter of business survival and competition, this puts more and more of a squeeze on businesses to focus their time on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited budgets, time, and resources and many business areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
One other important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media websites, you are investing all of your efforts into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or StumbleUpon. These sites can and will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without consulting you. Why invest so much time and effort building content on rented real estate? With a self-hosted WordPress site, you can have complete control of your own real estate and publish your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the availability of so many new marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited time, marketing budget, and resources. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you invest more efforts, budget, and time on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you do not own (e.g. YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring the benefits of building content on your own website?
- Do you create new content for every channel you plan to include in your marketing strategy?
The Benefits Of Automating Your Traffic-Getting Process With WordPress
What we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective formula for automating the web traffic generation with WordPress.
With this method, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary web marketing channels,
- Determine which marketing channels you should focus more time, budget, and 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 strongly recommend avoiding black hat techniques, websites, solutions, and anything designed to “game” or violate the policies and terms of service of companies like Google, Facebook, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic doesn’t require using black hat techniques!)
The purpose of this article is not to game web services or flaunt their terms of service, but to show you how to be smart with your limited resources and 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 that most business owners lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited budget, resources, and time.
So, instead of posting content to services one by one, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to marketing channels one by one is extremely time-consuming!)
Why not opt for a smarter, time-saving strategy 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 the distribution of your content to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content 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 WordPress site as explained in Part 2. Then, get it configured as shown in Part Three. Once all of this is in place, you then connect all of the dots using plugins.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Web Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a quick look at some traffic-generating plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Post content via RSS feeds to other blogs
Jetpack by WordPress.com
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and more as soon as you publish new content using a 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 (set up in Part 3.) …
(Make sure that Jetpack is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Jetpack – Publicize)
Once this section is configured, you will be able to automatically share your posts on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GooglePlus, and more …
(Share your content automatically on several social media accounts.)
After all account and plugin settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
Publicize adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details in your publishing box.)
Now, whenever you publish a new post, it will automatically be shared online to 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 a hands-free, automated way to create more exposure for your content online on social media sites.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
The WordPress native commenting function allows your blog readers to interact with your website, post new comments, reply to existing comments and engage with your content.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using 3rd-party plugins like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrate your comments with social media, helping to share and spread them around.
For example, with a plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they tweet, plus1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their last blog posts, which they can choose to include with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your site.)
Go here for more details about this plugin:
Social Link Machine
(SocialLinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
Social Link Machine is a plugin that lets you syndicate your content to over 30 traffic-generating sites, build anchor text backlinks, include relevant images and videos, and create social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to many authority websites, like:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Bitly, Linkagogo, Kippt, Reddit, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Sett, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Sendspace, etc.
Visit this website to learn more about the benefits of this plugin: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get actionable information about your content marketing efforts), we have written a detailed article about social media measurement tools and technologies that you may want to check out. For more details:
The above are just some examples of the many content distribution plugins that are available to WordPress users.
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 Sharing Process – Summary
Once you have your website or blog and plugins expertly configured and fully set up, all you need to do then to automatically begin bringing new web traffic is add great content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you never run out of content for your site:
Once you have configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the process. This step is covered in the next article in the series.
This is the end of Section 4
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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