Welcome to Part 4 of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to turn your site into an automated traffic generating machine using WordPress.
So far, here is what we have covered in this series:
In Part 1, we described the traffic automation process, and explained 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 automatically begin bringing traffic is publish great content on a consistent basis!)
In Part 2, we focused on the setup phase of the traffic automation process. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a website yet, how to set everything up if you already have a website, and what to do if your site was built using WordPress.
(In Part 2 we show you where to set up a WordPress web site on your domain)
In Part 3, we discuss important configuration decisions.
Here, we configure all the settings (hosting, WordPress and external) that affect your site’s traffic-getting ability …
(In Part 3 we explain how to configure hosting settings, internal settings, and external settings that can affect your website’s traffic-getting ability)
In this section of the series, we look at ways to automate your traffic with different WordPress plugins.
Why You Should Consider Automating Your Traffic Generation Process
Depending on who you talk to, you could find yourself investing an hour or more every day promoting your business on social media.
Most small businesses lack the time, resources and budget to run a full-time marketing department and engage in the kind of content marketing that many online marketing experts recommend doing. If you were to spend most of your time checking Twitter, LinkedIn, or Facebook in addition to planning and writing content for your blog or website, how could you get anything else in your business done?
(Small business owners spend most of their time just keeping their businesses up and running. Infographic source: National Federation Of Independent Businesses)
Small business owners spend most of their working hours keeping their businesses up and running. In addition to running a business, there’s also sales and marketing. After all, businesses need to stay competitive and grow in order to survive.
Marketing research done in 2012 by email and social media marketing company Vertical Response found that:
- 43% of all small businesses surveyed spent at least 6 hours per 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 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 was their most time-consuming online activity.
(Small businesses are spending more time each year marketing and promoting themselves online. Infographic source: VerticalResponse)
As businesses spend increasingly larger amounts of time promoting and marketing themselves online in order to compete and survive, this leaves less time for under-resourced businesses to focus on other equally important areas …
(Businesses with limited marketing budget, resources, and time and many areas to focus on have to plan their marketing strategy very carefully.)
Another important thing to keep in mind is that, in addition to spending time social media sites, 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 often will make decisions that can dramatically affect your business without prior warning. Why invest so much time and effort building content on someone else’s asset? With WordPress (self-hosted), you can control your own virtual real estate and distribute your content automatically to other sites.
Automating processes to leverage time and increase productivity is nothing new. Businesses have been doing it since the Industrial Age. In the Digital Age, however, the increasing availability of hundreds of new channels for marketing and promoting a business online creates a number of dilemmas for small business owners and marketing managers, especially for those with limited resources, budget, and time. For example:
- Which of these marketing channels do you focus more of your time, budget, and your efforts on?
- Should you invest so much time and effort building a web presence on other people’s sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, etc.) while neglecting your own website?
- 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 we’d like to show you now, is a free, simple, and effective strategy that allows you to automate your traffic generation process with WordPress.
With this strategy, you will be able to:
- Save time creating web content and social media,
- Save money on content creation and unnecessary online marketing costs,
- Determine which marketing channels you should invest more of your time, budget, and your efforts on,
- Invest most of your time 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 you to avoid using black hat techniques, solutions, sites, and anything that violates the policies and terms of service of sites like Facebook, Google, Pinterest, etc..
(Automating your web traffic does not have to involve the use of black hat techniques!)
What we are focusing in this article series is not to manipulate web services or break their terms of service, but 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 get additional exposure online from websites frequented by your target audience.
An Automated Content Distribution, Traffic And Lead Generation, And Sales & Marketing System
We’ve just seen that most businesses lack the time, resources and budget to engage in the kind of content marketing that many experts are prescribing. What you want to do, then, is be strategic with your limited time, resources, and budget.
So, instead of posting content to each different service, which can be very time-consuming …
(Posting content to different channels is very time-consuming!)
Why not do 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 channels.
You can:
- Automatically distribute content to social sites and bookmarking sites,
- Automatically distribute comments and content 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 get all of this done?
Simple … first, set up your site as explained in Part Two. Then, configure things as explained in Part 3. After all this is in place, you can then connect all of the dots using plugins such as the ones shown below.
The video below shows you how everything works once your WordPress site has been expertly configured …
WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Traffic Plugins
Let’s take a brief look at some examples of traffic-generation WordPress plugins that can help to:
- Distribute content automatically to social media sites and social bookmarking accounts
- Post comments automatically to other blogs
- Syndicate content to other websites via RSS
Jetpack Plugin
You can get your posts automatically distributed to sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, GooglePlus, LinkedIn 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 loads of 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 plugin – Publicize)
Configure this section to automatically share your posts on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+, and more …
(Publicize your posts automatically to various social media accounts.)
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 settings displays in your post publishing box.)
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 you publish, your post is automatically shared online.)
Visit the plugin website to learn more about the benefits of using this plugin: Jetpack by WordPress.com
CommentLuv
(CommentLuv)
WordPress has a native commenting feature that lets your site users engage with your website or blog, post comments, reply to other users and participate in discussions.
You can expand the WordPress native commenting feature using a third-party plugin like Disqus, IntenseDebate, LiveFyre, or CommentLuv that integrates with social media, helping to share and spread your content around.
For example, with a WordPress plugin like CommentLuv (Premium version), you can make your site more attractive to commenters by offering them a choice of backlinks if they like, plus1, or tweet your content. This plugin will visit the website or blog of the comment author while they are entering their comment and retrieve their most recent blog posts, which can be included with their comment after clicking the submit button.
(CommentLuv can encourage a greater level of commenting and improve user engagement on your website.)
Visit this site to learn more about the benefits of this powerful plugin:
Social Link Machine
(Social LinkMachine – WordPress content distribution plugin)
SocialLinkMachine is a plugin that lets you automatically syndicate and drip-feed your content to over 30 online platforms, build diverse anchor text backlinks, include relevant videos and images, and 2nd-tier links and social signals on auto-pilot …
(Social LinkMachine – syndicate and drip-feed your content automatically to over 30 online platforms)
With SocialLinkMachine installed, you can automatically drip-feed content to many social websites, including:
- Bookmarking Platforms: e.g. Deviantart, Folkd, Plurk, Zotero, etc.
- Blogs: e.g. Blogger, Rebel Mouse, Tribe, etc.
- Social Media Platforms: Facebook, Twitter, etc.
- Image Sharing Platforms: e.g. Pinterest, etc.
- PDF Sharing Platforms: e.g. Issuu, Scribd, etc.
For more details about using this WordPress plugin, visit this website: Social LinkMachine
Also, if you would like to know more about setting up social media monitoring (in order to get useful information about your content distribution efforts), we have created a comprehensive article where we explore over 30 social media tracking tools that are worth checking out and knowing about. To learn more, visit this page:
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 System: Automated Content Syndication Stage – Summary
Once you have your WordPress site and plugins set up and expertly configured, all you need to do to begin attracting more web traffic is add content on a regular basis.
We have created an entire email email-based training course aimed at helping you never run out of great content ideas for posting to your web site:
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to optimize the web-traffic generation process. This step is covered in the next section of the WordPress Traffic Automation System series.
This is the end of Part 4
To keep reading this article, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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