Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Site Traffic Blueprint article series, where we explain how to create an automated traffic generating machine using the WordPress CMS.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we describe the traffic automation process, and explain why using an expertly configured WordPress website is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress site, all you have to do to automatically bring traffic is post content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we discussed the setup phase. We explained the best way to start 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 with WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you how 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 ability to generate traffic automatically …
(In Part Three you will configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In Part Four, we will discuss ways to automate the traffic-getting process with plugins.
Why Automate The Traffic-Getting Process?
Depending on which marketing experts you talk to, you could end up investing an hour or two (or more) every day posting content on social media.
Most businesses simply lack the time, human resources and financial means to run a full-time marketing and content creation department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts advise. If you were to spend hours posting updates on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn in addition to writing content for your website or blog, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small businesses spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Many businesses spend most of their time keeping their businesses up and running. On top of this, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to remain competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done by VerticalResponse – an email and social media marketing company, found that:
- 43% of all businesses surveyed spent around six 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 was a 66% increase from the previous year, so if the same survey was done today, the figures would probably be even 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. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As small businesses spend more time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other important areas …
(Businesses with limited budget, resources, and time and many business areas to focus on require careful planning of their marketing strategy.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time promoting and marketing your business on various social sites, all of your efforts are going into virtual real estate that you have no control over. You don’t own Twitter, Facebook, or Pinterest. These sites often will make decisions that can dramatically impact your business without requiring your input. Why invest so much time and effort building a business on rented real estate? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other websites.
Automating processes to save time and increase productivity is not new. Businesses of all sizes have been doing it ever since the Industrial Age. In the Information Age, however, the increasing availability of many new online marketing channels creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners, especially for those with limited resources, marketing budgets, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels should you invest more time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building assets on sites that you ultimately have little to no control over (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn, Tumblr, etc.) while ignoring 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-Getting Process With WordPress
What I’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy for automating your traffic-getting process with WordPress.
With this formula, 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 marketing channels you should invest more of your budget, time, 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 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 tools, strategies, sites, and anything designed to manipulate or violate the terms of service and policies of companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, etc..
(Web traffic automation does not have to involve using black hat methods!)
What we are focusing in this article series is to show you how to be smart with your 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 small businesses lack the time, resources and financial means to engage in the kind of content marketing that many online experts advise doing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited resources, budget, and time.
So, instead of posting content to services one at a time, which is extremely time-consuming …
(Posting content to individual channels can be extremely time-consuming!)
Why not choose this one 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 one-time, and automate your content distribution to all other services.
You can:
- Distribute content automatically to social media channels and bookmarking sites,
- Distribute comments and content automatically to other blogs and web 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 do all of this?
Simple … first, set up your WordPress website as explained in Part 2. Then, configure your site settings as described in Part Three. 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 Traffic Automation Blueprint – Traffic Generation Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of plugins that can help:
- Syndicate content to social sites and social bookmarking websites
- Distribute comments automatically to other blogs
- Distribute content automatically to other web properties via RSS feeds
Jetpack
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, 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 great functions.
After installing Jetpack, you will need to connect the plugin to the WordPress.com account set up in Part Three …
(Make sure the Jetpack plugin is connected to your WordPress.com account)
Next, activate a feature called Publicize …
(Activate the Publicize feature)
You can share your posts on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and more …
(Publicize your content automatically to several social sites.)
After all of the plugin and account settings have been configured, your content is ready for distribution.
The Publicize feature adds a new section to your Publish box …
(Publicize account details appear in your post publishing box.)
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 you publish, your new posts will be automatically syndicated online.)
This is an automated and hands-free way to create more exposure for your content online on social media networks.
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your blog readers interact with your site, post comments, reply to existing comments and participate in discussions as part of a community.
You can enhance the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to spread and share them online.
For example, using a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Pro version) can help make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a wider choice of backlinks if they tweet, +1, or like your content. This plugin will visit the site of the comment author while they type their comment and retrieve their latest blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking submit.
(CommentLuv can attract more comments and improve user engagement on your website or blog.)
Go here for more details about the benefits of using this plugin:
SocialLinkMachine
(Social Link Machine – Content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a WordPress plugin that allows you to automatically drip-feed content, build backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and social signals on auto-pilot …
(SocialLinkMachine – syndicate content automatically to many social websites)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically syndicate content to dozens of traffic-generating sites, like:
- Social Bookmarking Sites: e.g. Delicious, Linkagogo, Plurk, Scoop.it, etc.
- Web 2.0 Blogs: e.g. Blog.com, Overblog, WordPress.com, etc.
- Social Platforms: Google Plus, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Flickr, etc.
- PDF Sharing: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
To learn more about this WordPress plugin, go here: Social Link Machine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content marketing campaigns), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media monitoring tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your website and plugins set up and configured, all you then have to do is publish fresh content on a regular basis to automatically begin attracting traffic organically.
We have created an entire email training series aimed at helping you never run out of content ideas for your website or blog:
Once you have expertly 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 article in our WordPress Traffic System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To continue reading, click on the link below:
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